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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gerson, Kathleen.
The unﬁ nished revolution : how a new generation is reshaping family,
work, and gender in America / Kathleen Gerson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-537167-3
1. Family—United States.  2.  Work and family—United States.
3.  Professional employees—United States.  4.  Women employees—United States.
5.  Male employees—United States.  6.  Sex role—United States.
I. Title.
HQ536.G47 2009
306.872—dc22

2009012789

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

ike growing up, writing a book is a long and unpredictable process
that depends on the generosity of family, friends, and colleagues as well

as strangers. Having reached the end of the path for this one, I can only mar-
vel at my good fortune for the support so many people have given me along
the way.

To start at the beginning, the research project on the Immigrant Second

Generation in Metropolitan New York, conducted by Philip Kasinitz, John
Mollenkopf, and Mary Waters, helped me to identify my sample. (The leading
funding source for this project was The Russell Sage Foundation, led by Eric
Wanner.) Jennifer Holdaway introduced me to the intricacies (and quirks)
of Atlas.ti. Two gifted research assistants, Stephanie Byrd and Jordana Pes-
trong, conducted a portion of the interviews, and their contributions greatly
enriched insights gleaned from my own forays into the ﬁ eld. Eleanor Bernal
transcribed the interviews with her usual intelligence and good cheer, and
Courtney Abrams helped organize and code the transcripts for computer anal-
ysis. Sarah Damaske provided both heroic help in compiling the references
and insightful feedback on early drafts. Most important, the young women
and men who agreed to spend their time with me and my assistants have
my deep gratitude and respect. We entered their lives as strangers, and they
opened their doors and shared their most private experiences and thoughts
with us. My hope is that the interview process gave them at least a portion of
the insight and enjoyment that their participation gave us.

A wide and deep network of colleagues and friends listened to my devel-

oping thoughts, provided essential feedback, and offered moral support.
A writing group with Lynn Chancer, Ruth Horowitz, and Arlene Skolnick

A C K N OW L E D G M E N T S

a c k n ow l e d g m e n t s

served as a forum for thoughtful discussions and constructive criticism. Many
other colleagues inspired me with their own work and their reactions to mine.
Among these, I am especially grateful to Rosalind Barnett, Cynthia Epstein,
Jennifer Glass, Sydney Halpern, Lynne Haney, Sharon Hays, Rosanna Hertz,
Jerry A. Jacobs, Pamela Stone, Viviana Zelizer, and Eviatar Zerubavel. My
students, especially Michael Armato, Stephanie Byrd, Sarah Damaske, Adam
Green, Pamela Kaufman, Allen Li, and Louise Roth, also offered valued feed-
back. Over the years they have taught me as much as I taught them.

The Council on Contemporary Families provided an opportunity to work

closely with a remarkable group of academics and practitioners who collabo-
rate at the intersection of research, policy, and clinical practice. My thanks go
to all my fellow board members and especially to Stephanie Coontz, Joshua
Coleman, Carolyn and Phil Cowan, Paula England, Frank Furstenberg, Steven
Mintz, Mignon Moore, Barbara Risman, Virginia Rutter, Pepper Schwartz,
Arlene Skolnick, and Pamela Smock. It was a pleasure to organize a CCF con-
ference on “dilemmas of work and family in the twenty-ﬁ rst century” with
Janet Gornick and Joan Williams and then to publish a selection of these
presentations in The American Prospect, working with Robert Kuttner.

During the course of this project, I beneﬁ tted from stimulating reactions

to a number of presentations of my work-in-progress. My thanks go to col-
leagues at the Charles Phelps Taft Center for Research at the University of
Cincinnati, the Institute for the Study of Status Passages and Risks in the Life
Course at the University of Bremen in Germany, the MacArthur Foundation
Research Network on the Transition to Adulthood, the National Opinion
Research Center at the University of Chicago, the New York Chapter of the
Stanford Institute for Research on Women and Gender, the Sloan Center
for the Study of Myth and Ritual in Everyday Life at Emory University, the
Sloan Work and Family Research Network, the Working Group on Wealth
and Power in the Post-Industrial Age, and the Departments of Sociology
at Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, University of California
at San Diego, University of Southern California, and Vanderbilt Univer-
sity. I am also grateful for incisive blind reviews from Stephanie Coontz,
Sharon Hays, Pamela Stone, Eviatar Zerubavel, and two anonymous review-
ers as well as for thoughtful comments from Naomi Schneider at the Uni-
versity of California Press and Elizabeth Knoll and Joyce Seltzer at Harvard
University Press.

It has been an unqualiﬁ ed pleasure to work with the team at Oxford Uni-

versity Press. David McBride and Niko Pfund inspired me with their enthu-
siasm and professionalism. Keith Faivre handled the editing and production
stages with an unerringly deft touch. To put it simply, James Cook has been

a c k n ow l e d g m e n t s

the best editor imaginable. Through every stage in the publication process,
he has gone above and beyond the call of duty, offering wise advice, mas-
terful editing of the manuscript, much-appreciated help with the title, and
unstinting attention to large and small details at every turning point. In an
age of declining budgets and overburdened editors, I have been exceedingly
fortunate to have James as an editor and a friend.

Since this book is about families, writing it has provided me with an

opportunity to savor my own. Rose Blum successfully raised my sisters and
me with unwavering grace and dignity at a time when single motherhood was
rare and women’s options were far too limited. Now in her ninety-third year,
she remains as warm, courageous, and life-afﬁ rming as ever. She taught me
that a love of life, an indomitable spirit, and a sense of humor will not only
help you prevail over life’s difﬁ culties but also give you the courage to make
a difference in the world. My two sisters, Linda and Betty Gerson, are testa-
ment to the wisdom of her outlook. Through their friendship and example,
they have given me a lifelong appreciation for the meaning of sisterhood.

John Mollenkopf, my partner-in-life for three decades, has made this book

possible on every level—from his careful reading and brilliant editing of the
manuscript to our constant discussions about gender, work, and family both
as urgent public matters and personal conundrums to his devoted parenting,
inspired cooking, and optimistic outlook. When it comes to being an equal
partner, he has walked the walk as well as talked the talk. For sharing this
journey with me, I thank him from the bottom of my heart.

Finally, my daughter, Emily, a child of the gender revolution, has inspired

me in too many ways to name. She taught me to appreciate the joys and
challenges she has faced growing up and to treasure the gift of unconditional
love. It is an honor beyond measure to be her mother, and I could not be more
proud of her. I am conﬁ dent that Emily and her peers will work to create a
more humane, equal, and just world for the generations to follow. Now it is
up to the rest of us to help them succeed.

c h a p t e r o n e

The Shaping of a New Generation

t is a cool, clear morning in Oceanside Terrace, a working-class suburb
where American ﬂ ags are almost as plentiful as family pets. As Josh

answers the doorbell, I anticipate the story he will tell. His brief answers to
a telephone survey tell a straightforward tale of growing up in a stable, two-
parent home of the kind Americans like to call “traditional.” He reported,
for instance, that his dad worked as a carpenter throughout his childhood, his
mom stayed home during most of his preschool years, and his parents raised
three sons and were still married after thirty years.

After we settle into overstuffed chairs in his parents’ cozy living room,

where he is home for a brief visit, the more complete life story Josh tells
belies this simple image of family life. Despite the apparent stability and
continuity conveyed in the telephone survey, Josh actually felt he lived in
three different families, one after the other. Anchored by a breadwinning
father and a home-centered mother, the ﬁ rst did indeed take a traditional
form. Yet this outward appearance mattered less to him than his parents’
constant ﬁ ghting over money, housework, and the drug and alcohol habit his
father developed in the army. As Josh put it, “All I remember is just being
real upset, not being able to look at the beneﬁ ts if it would remain like that,
having all the ﬁ ghting and that element in the house.”

As Josh reached school age, his home life changed dramatically. His

mother took a job as an administrator in a local business and, feeling more
secure about her ability to support the family, asked her husband to move out
and “either get straight or don’t come back.” Even though his father’s depar-
ture was painful and fairly unusual in this family-oriented neighborhood,
relief tempered Josh’s sense of loss. He certainly did not miss his parents’

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

constant ﬁ ghting, his father’s surly demeanor, or the embarrassment he felt
whenever he dared to bring a friend home. His parents’ separation also pro-
vided space for his mother to renew her self-esteem through her work outside
the home. Josh missed his father, but he also knew a distance had always
existed between them, even if it now took a physical as well as an emotional
form. He came to accept this new situation as the better of two less-than-
ideal alternatives.

Yet Josh’s family life took a third turn a year later. Just as he had adjusted

to a new routine, Josh’s father “got clean” and returned. Although his parents
reunited, they hardly seemed the same couple. The separation had triggered
a remarkable change in both. Being away had given his father a new appre-
ciation for his family and a deepening desire to be a “real family man.” Now
drug-free, he resolved to become thoroughly involved in his children’s lives.
Josh’s mother displayed equally dramatic changes, for taking a job had given
her a newfound pride in knowing she could stand on her own. As his father
became more involved and his mother more self-conﬁ dent, it lifted the fam-
ily’s spirits and fortunes. In Josh’s words, “that changed the whole family
dynamic. We got extremely close.”

In the years that followed, Josh watched his parents forge a new partner-

ship quite different from the conﬂ ict-ridden one he remembered. “A whole
new relationship” developed with his father, whom he came to see as “one
of my best friends.” He also valued his mother’s strengthening ties to work,
which not only nourished her sense of self but also provided enough addi-
tional income for him to attend college.

Now twenty-four, Josh has left home to begin his own adult journey. As

he looks back over the full sweep of his childhood, he sees that, while the
actors did not change, the play did. In fact, at some point in this series of
events, he lived in all three types of households—traditional, single- parent,
and dual-earner—now dominating the debate about family change. To Josh,
however, these pictures of discrete family types do not do justice to the ﬂ ow
of his family experiences. Not only did Josh live in each of these family forms,
but the static nature of these categories misses the importance of the turning
points when his parents faced difﬁ culties and fashioned new ways of connect-
ing to each other, their children, and the wider world. For Josh, these transi-
tions produced “three different childhoods, really.”

As Josh considers his options for the future, he draws inspiration from the

ﬂ exibility his parents were able to muster in the face of enormous personal
and social challenges. He hopes to avoid the problems of his parents’ early
marriage, but he admires their efforts to fashion more personally satisfying
and mutually supportive bonds. He, too, wants to build a marriage that is

t h e s h a p i n g o f a n e w g e n e r at i o n

ﬂ exible enough to weather the difﬁ culties that will surely come, even if he
cannot foresee what exactly they will be. Yet his highest hopes are colliding
with his greatest fears. The few close relationships he has had with young
women have underscored his desire to build the ﬂ exible, egalitarian, and
sharing partnership his parents ﬁ nally created. After a series of dissatisfying
construction jobs, he now plans to become a teacher and hopes this occupa-
tional choice will allow him to integrate satisfying work with ample time for
children and family.

Yet Josh’s early forays into the worlds of work and dating have also left

him worried about the obstacles looming on the horizon. On the one hand,
the pressure to put in long workweeks just to earn a decent living seems to
leave little time for life beyond the world of work. On the other, the chance
of ﬁ nding a fulﬁ lling relationship that is intimate, enduring, and equal seems
“iffy” at best. Although he wants to “have it all” and plans to “reach for these
golden rings,” he fears that building a happy marriage and striking a good
balance between work and home will remain just beyond his grasp.

Josh’s story exempliﬁ es how the tumultuous changes of the last several
decades require us to think in new ways about families, work, and gender.
Josh recounts how a family pathway unfolded as his parents developed new
responses to a set of unanticipated crises. In a rapidly changing world, their
efforts to let go of rigid, ﬁ xed roles—and replace them with more ﬂ exible
forms of providing emotional and ﬁ nancial support—made the crucial dif-
ference.

Yet Josh also recognizes that his parents’ “happy ending” was not

inevitable and their lives could have followed a less uplifting path. These
experiences have given him high hopes for his future, but also left him with
nagging doubts about his own ability to overcome the barriers likely to block
the way.

Josh and his peers are children of the gender revolution.

They watched

their mothers go to work and their parents invent a mosaic of new family
forms. As they embark on their own journeys through adulthood, they take
for granted options their parents barely imagined and their grandparents
could not envision, but they also face dilemmas that decades of prior change
have not resolved. Shifts in women’s place and new forms of adult partner-
ships have created more options, but they also pose unprecedented conﬂ icts
and challenges. Is it possible to meld a lasting, egalitarian intimate bond
with a satisfying work life, or will gender conﬂ icts, fragile relationships, and
uncertain job prospects overwhelm such possibilities? Like Josh, all of the
young women and men who came of age during this period of tumultuous
change must make sense of their experiences growing up and build their own

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

adult paths amid new options and old constraints; their strategies will shape
the course of work, family, and gender change for decades to come.

Growing Up in Changing Families

Whether they are judged as liberating or disastrous, the closing decades of the
twentieth century witnessed revolutionary shifts in the ways new generations
grow to adulthood. The march of mothers into the workplace, combined with
the rise of alternatives to lifelong marriage, created a patchwork of domestic
arrangements that bears little resemblance to the 1950s Ozzie and Harriet
world of American nostalgia.

By 2000, 60 percent of all married couples had

two earners, while only 26 percent depended solely on a husband’s income,
down from 51 percent in 1970. In fact, in 2006, two- paycheck couples
were more numerous than male-breadwinner households had been in 1970.
During this same period, single-parent homes, overwhelmingly headed by
women, claimed a growing proportion of American households.

To put this

in perspective, not all female-headed households consist of a mother only,
since many parents cohabit but do not marry. Nevertheless, in 2007, 33 per-
cent of non-Hispanic white children and 60 percent of black children lived
with one parent (up from 10 percent and 41 percent in 1970).

As today’s

young women and men have reached adulthood, two-income and single-
parent homes outnumber married couples with sole (male) breadwinners by
a substantial margin.

Equally signiﬁ cant, members of this new generation lived in families far

more likely to change shape over time. While families have always faced pre-
dictable turning points as children are born, grow up, and leave home, today’s
young adults were reared in households where volatile changes occurred when
parents altered their ties to each other or to the wider world of work. These
young women and men grew up in a period when divorce rates were increas-
ing and a rising proportion of children were born into homes anchored either
by a single mother or cohabiting but unmarried parents.

Lifelong marriage,

once the only socially acceptable option for bearing and rearing children,
became one of several alternatives that now include staying single, breaking
up, or remarrying.

This generation also came of age just as women’s entry into the paid

labor force began to challenge the once ascendant pattern of home-centered
motherhood. In 1975, only 34 percent of mothers with children under the
age of three held a paid job, but this number rose to 61 percent by 2000. This
peak subsided slightly, with 57 percent of such mothers at work in 2004,

t h e s h a p i n g o f a n e w g e n e r at i o n

but even this ﬁ gure represents an enormous shift from earlier patterns. More
telling, among mothers with children under eighteen, a full 71 percent are
now employed.

In fact, the recent ebbs and ﬂ ows among working mothers with young

children point to the competing pushes and pulls women continue to con-
front in balancing the needs of children and the demands of jobs. Even as
women have strengthened their commitment to paid work, they have had
to cope with unforeseen work-family conﬂ icts. Growing up in this period,
children observed women’s massive shift from home to work, but they also
watched their mothers move back and forth between full-time work, part-
time work, and no job at all.

Finally, the rising uncertainty in men’s economic fortunes has also rever-

berated in their children’s lives. During the closing decades of the twenti-
eth century, the “family wage,” which once made it possible for most men
(though certainly not all) to support nonworking wives, became a quaint relic
of an earlier time.

Whether at the factory or the ofﬁ ce, a growing number

of men faced unpredictable prospects as secure, well-paid careers offering the
promise of upward mobility became an increasingly endangered species.

Fathers who expected to be sole breadwinners found they needed their wives’
earnings to survive. Like a life raft in choppy seas, second incomes helped
keep a growing number of families aﬂ oat and allowed some fathers to change
jobs if they hit a sudden dead end on a once promising career path. As more
fathers could not live up to the “good provider” ethic, however, many left
their families or were dismissed by mothers who saw little reason to care for
a man who could not keep himself aﬂ oat. The changes in men’s lives and eco-
nomic fortunes provide another reason why many members of this generation
experienced unpredictable ups and downs.

Coming of age in an era of more ﬂ uid marriages, less stable work careers,

and profound shifts in mothers’ ties to the workplace shaped the experiences
of a new generation. Compared to their parents or grandparents, they are
more likely to have lived in a home containing either one parent or a cohabit-
ing but unmarried couple and to have seen married parents break up or single
parents remarry. They are more likely to have watched a stay-at-home mother
join the workplace or an employed mother pull back from work when the
balancing act got too difﬁ cult. And they are more likely to have seen their
ﬁ nancial stability rise or fall as a household’s composition changed or parents
encountered unexpected shifts in their job situations.

These intertwined changes in intimate relationships, work trajectories,

and gender arrangements have created new patterns of living, working, and
family-building that amount to no less than a social revolution. Yet this

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

revolution also faces great resistance from institutions rooted in earlier eras.
On the job, workers continue to experience enormous pressures to give unin-
terrupted full-time, and often overtime, commitment not just to move up
but even stay in place. In the home, privatized caretaking leaves parents,
especially mothers, coping with seemingly endless demands and unattain-
able standards. And the entrenched conﬂ icts between work and family life
place mounting strains on adult partnerships. The tensions between chang-
ing lives and resistant institutions have created dilemmas for everyone.

In all of these ways, the children of the gender revolution grew to adult-

hood amid unprecedented, unpredictable, and uneven changes. They now
must build their lives in an irrevocably but uncertainly altered world.

The Voices of a New Generation

What are the consequences of this widespread, but partial, social revolu-
tion? Where some see a generation shortchanged by working mothers and
fragmenting households, others see one that can draw on more diverse and
egalitarian models of family life. Where some see a resurgence of tradition,
especially among those young women who want to leave the workplace, oth-
ers see a deepening decline of commitment in the rising number of young
adults living on their own. Whether judged to be worrisome or welcome,
these contradictory views point to the continuing puzzles of the family and
gender revolution. Has the rise of two-earner and single-parent households
left children feeling neglected and insecure, or has it given them hope for
the possibility of more diverse and ﬂ exible relationships? Will the young
women and men reared in these changing circumstances turn back toward
older patterns or seek new ways of building their families and integrating
family and work?

To resolve these puzzles, we need to take a close look at the young women

and men who came of age in this turbulent period. Through no choice of
their own, they grew up in rapidly changing times, and their experiences are
crucial to deciphering the contours and unexpected consequences of gender,
work, and family change. Their lives also provide an opportunity to view the
inner workings of diverse family forms, including two-income partnerships
and single-parent homes as well as homemaker-breadwinner households, from
the vantage point of the young people most directly affected. This generation
lived through a natural social experiment, and their biographies make it pos-
sible to illuminate processes of social change and human development that
remain hidden during more stable historical periods.

t h e s h a p i n g o f a n e w g e n e r at i o n

Poised between the dependency of childhood and the irrevocable invest-

ments of later life, young adulthood is a crucial phase in the human life
course that represents both a time of individual transition and a potential
engine for social change.

Old enough to look back over the full sweep of

their childhoods and forward to their own futures, today’s young adults are
uniquely positioned to help us see beneath the surface of popular debate to
deeper truths. Their childhood experiences can tell us how family, work, and
gender arrangements shape life chances, and their young adult strategies can,
in turn, reveal how people use their experiences to craft new life paths and
redeﬁ ne the contours of change.

Regardless of their own family experiences, today’s young women and

men have grown up in revolutionary times. For better or worse, they have
inherited new options and questions about women’s and men’s proper
places.

Now making the transition to adulthood, they have no well-worn

paths to follow. Marriage no longer offers the promise of permanence, nor
is it the only option for bearing and rearing children, but there is no clear
route to building and maintaining an intimate bond. Most women no
longer assume they can or will want to stay home with young children,
but there is no clear model for how children should now be raised. Most
men can no longer assume they can or will want to support a family on
their own, but there is no clear path to manhood. Work and family shifts
have created an ambiguous mix of new options and new insecurities, with
growing conﬂ icts between work and parenting, autonomy and commit-
ment, time and money. Amid these social conﬂ icts and contradictions,
young women and men must search for new answers and develop innova-
tive responses.

The Lives of Young Women and Men

Each generation’s experiences are both a judgment about the past and a
statement about the future. To understand the sources of these outlooks and
actions, we need to examine what C. Wright Mills argued is the core focus of
“the sociological imagination”—the intersection of biography, history, and
social structure.

This approach calls on us to investigate how speciﬁ c social

and historical contexts give shape to the transhistorical links between social
arrangements and human lives, paying special attention to how societies and
individuals develop. Such an approach is especially needed when social shifts
erode earlier ways of life, reveal the tenuous nature of certainties once taken
for granted, and create new social conditions and possibilities.

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

Following in this tradition, I examine the lives of a strategically situated

group to ask and answer broad questions. How, why, and under what condi-
tions does large-scale social change take place? What are its limits, and what
shapes its trajectories? How do social arrangements affect individual lives,
and how, in turn, does the cumulative inﬂ uence of individual responses give
unexpected shape to the course of change?

Using this pivotal generation as a window on change, I interviewed 120

young women and men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-two. As a
whole, they lived through the full range of changes taking place in family life.
Most lived in some form of nontraditional home before reaching eighteen.
Forty percent had some experience growing up with a single parent, and
another 7 percent saw their parents separate or divorce after they left home.
About a third had two parents who held full-time jobs for a signiﬁ cant por-
tion of their childhood, while 27 percent grew up in homes where fathers were
consistent primary breadwinners and mothers worked intermittently or not at
all. Yet even many of these traditional households underwent signiﬁ cant shifts
as parents changed their work situation or marriages faced a crisis.

With an average age of twenty-four at the time of the interview, they are

evenly divided between women and men, and about 5 percent (also evenly
divided between women and men) openly identiﬁ ed as either lesbian or gay.
Randomly chosen from a broad range of city and suburban neighborhoods
dispersed widely throughout the New York metropolitan area, the group
includes people from a broad range of racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds
who were reared in all regions of the country, including the South, West, and
Midwest as well as throughout the East.

About 46 percent had a middle-class or upper-middle-class background,

while another 38 percent described a working-class upbringing and 16 per-
cent lived in or on the edge of poverty (including 10 percent whose fam-
ilies received public assistance during some portion of their childhood).

The group contained a similar level of racial and ethnic diversity. In all,
55 percent identiﬁ ed as non-Hispanic white, 22 percent as African- American,
17 percent as Latino or Latina, and 6 percent as Asian.

As a group, they

reﬂ ect the demographic contours of young adults throughout metropolitan
America.

Everyone participated in a lengthy, in-depth life history interview in which

they described their experiences growing up, reﬂ ected on the signiﬁ cance of
these experiences, and considered their hopes and plans for the future. Focus-
ing on processes of stability and change, the interview sought to uncover
critical turning points in the lives of families and individuals, to discover
the social contexts and events triggering these changes, and to explore how

t h e s h a p i n g o f a n e w g e n e r at i o n

people imparted meaning and adopted coping strategies in response. Their
life stories provide a surprising view on the social revolution this generation
has inherited and whose future course it will shape.

The View from Below

What have young women and men concluded about their experiences in
changing families? In contrast to the popular claim that this generation feels
neglected by working mothers, unsettled by parental breakups, and wary of
equality, they express strong support for working mothers and much greater
concern with the quality of the relationship between parents than whether par-
ents stayed together or separated.

Almost four out of ﬁ ve of those who had

work-committed mothers believe this was the best option, while half of those
whose mothers did not have sustained work lives wish they had.

On the con-

troversial matters of divorce and single parenthood, a slight majority of those
who lived in a single-parent home wish their biological parents had stayed
together, but almost half believe it was better, if not ideal, for their parents to
separate than to live in a conﬂ ict-ridden or silently unhappy home. Even more
surprising, while a majority of children from intact homes think this was best,
two out of ﬁ ve feel their parents might have been better off splitting up.

The following pages reveal a generation more focused on how well parents

met the challenges of providing economic and emotional support than on
what form their families took. They care about how their families unfolded,
not what they looked like at any one point in time. Their narratives show that
family life is a ﬁ lm, not a snapshot. Families are not a stable set of relation-
ships frozen in time but a dynamic process that changes daily, monthly, and
yearly as children grow. In fact, all families experience change, and even the
happiest ones must adapt to changing contingencies—both in their midst
and in the wider world—if they are to remain happy. No outcome is guaran-
teed. Stable, supportive families can become insecure and riven with conﬂ ict,
while unstable families can develop supportive patterns and bonds.

Young women and men recount family pathways that moved in different

directions as some homes became more supportive and others less so. These
pathways undermine the usefulness of conceiving of families as types. Not
only do many contemporary families change their form as time passes, but
even those retaining a stable outward form can change in subtle but impor-
tant ways as interpersonal dynamics shift.

By changing the focus from family types to family pathways, we can tran-

scend the seemingly intractable debate pitting “traditional” homes against

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

other family forms. The lives of these young women and men call into ques-
tion a number of strongly held beliefs about the primacy of family structure
and the supremacy of one household type. Their experiences point instead to
the importance of processes of family change, the ways that social contexts
shape a family’s trajectory, and people’s active efforts to cope with and draw
meaning from their changing circumstances.

What explains why some family pathways remain stable or improve,

while others stay mired in difﬁ culty or take a downward course? Gender ﬂ ex-
ibility in breadwinning and caretaking provides a key to answering this ques-
tion. In the place of ﬁ xed, rigid behavioral strategies and mental categories
demarcating separate spheres for women and men, gender ﬂ exibility involves
more equal sharing and more ﬂ uid boundaries for organizing and apportion-
ing emotional, social, and economic care. Flexible strategies can take differ-
ent forms, including sharing, taking turns, and expanding beyond narrowly
deﬁ ned roles, in addition to more straightforward deﬁ nitions of equality,
but they all transgress the once rigidly drawn boundaries between women as
caretakers and men as breadwinners.

In a world where men may not be able or willing to support wives and

children and women may need and want to pursue sustained work ties, par-
ents (and other caretakers) could only overcome such family crises as the
loss of a father’s income or the decline of a mother’s morale by letting go of
rigid gender boundaries. As families faced a father’s departure, a mother’s
frustration at staying home, or the loss of a parent’s job, the ability of parents
and other caretakers to respond ﬂ exibly to new family needs helped parents
create more ﬁ nancially stable and emotionally supportive homes. Flexible
approaches to earning and caring helped families adapt, while inﬂ exible out-
looks on women’s and men’s proper places left them ill prepared to cope with
new economic and social realities. Although it may not be welcomed by those
who prefer a clearer gender order, gender ﬂ exibility in earning and caring
provided the most effective way for families to transcend the economic chal-
lenges and marital conundrums that imperiled their children’s well-being.

Facing the Future

What, then, do young women and men hope and plan to do in their own
lives? My interviews subvert the conventional wisdom here as well, whether
it stresses the rise of “opt-out” mothers or the decline of commitment.

Most of my interviewees hope to create lasting, egalitarian partnerships, but
they are also doubtful about their chances of reaching this goal. Whether

t h e s h a p i n g o f a n e w g e n e r at i o n

or not their parents stayed together, more than nine out of ten hope to rear
children in the context of a satisfying lifelong bond. Far from rejecting the
value of commitment, almost everyone wants to create a lasting marriage or
marriage-like relationship.

Their afﬁ rmation of the value of commitment does not, however, reﬂ ect a

desire for a relationship based on clear, ﬁ xed separate spheres for mothers and
fathers. Instead, most want to create a ﬂ exible, egalitarian partnership with
considerable room for personal autonomy. Whether reared by homemaker-
breadwinning, dual-earner, or single parents, most women and men want
a committed bond where they share both paid work and family caretaking.
Three-fourths of those reared in dual-earner homes want their spouses to
share breadwinning and caretaking, but so do more than two-thirds of those
from traditional homes and close to nine-tenths of those with single par-
ents. Four-ﬁ fths of the women want egalitarian relationships, but so do over
two-thirds of the men.

Yet young women and men also fear it may not be possible to forge

an enduring, egalitarian relationship or integrate committed careers with
devoted parenting. Skeptical about whether they can ﬁ nd the right partner
and worried about balancing family and work amid mounting job demands
and a lack of caretaking supports, they are developing second-best fallback
strategies as insurance against their worst-case fears. In contrast to their ide-
als, women’s and men’s fallback strategies diverge sharply.

Hoping to avoid being trapped in an unhappy marriage or deserted by

an unfaithful spouse, most women see work as essential to their survival. If a
supportive partner cannot be found, they prefer self-reliance over economic
dependence within a traditional marriage. Most men, however, worry more
about the costs equal sharing might exact on their careers. If time-greedy
workplaces make it difﬁ cult to strike an equal balance between work and
parenting, men prefer a neotraditional arrangement that allows them to put
work ﬁ rst and rely on a partner for the lion’s share of caregiving. As they
prepare to settle for second best, women and men both emphasize the impor-
tance of work as a central source of personal identity and ﬁ nancial survival,
but this stance leads them to pursue different strategies. Reversing the argu-
ment that women are returning to tradition, men are more likely to want to
count on a partner at home. Women, on the other hand, are more likely to
see paid work as essential to providing for themselves and their children in
a world where they may not be able to count on a man.

The rise of self-reliant women, who stress emotional and economic auton-

omy, and neotraditional men, who grant women’s choice to work but also
want to maintain their position as the breadwinning specialist, portends

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

a new work-family divide. But this division does not reﬂ ect the highest
aspirations of most women or men. The debate about whether a new genera-
tion is rejecting commitment or embracing tradition does not capture the
full story, because it does not distinguish between ideals and fallback positions.
Young adults overwhelmingly hope to forge a lasting marriage or marriage-
like relationship, to create a ﬂ exible and egalitarian bond with their intimate
partner, and to blend home and work in their own lives. When it comes
to their aspirations, women and men share many hopes and dreams. But
fears that time-demanding workplaces, unreliable partners, and a dearth of
caretaking supports will place these ideals out of reach propel them down
different paths.

Drawing a distinction between ideals and enacted strategies resolves

the ambiguity about the shape and direction of generational change. One-
dimensional images—whether they depict resurgent traditionalism or fam-
ily decline—cannot capture the complex, ambiguous experiences of today’s
young women and men. New generations neither wish to turn back to earlier
gender patterns nor to create a brave new world of disconnected individuals.
Most prefer instead to build a life that balances autonomy and commitment
in the context of satisfying work and an egalitarian partnership.

Yet changing lives are colliding with resistant institutions, leaving new

generations facing alternatives that are far less appealing. While institutional
shifts such as the erosion of single-earner paychecks, the fragility of modern
marriage, and the expanding options and pressures for women to work have
made gender ﬂ exibility both desirable and necessary, demanding workplaces
and privatized child rearing make work-family integration and egalitar-
ian commitment difﬁ cult to achieve. Young women and men must reshape
family, work, and gender amid an unﬁ nished revolution. Whether they are
able to create the world they want or will have to fall back on less desirable
options remains an open question. Their struggles point to the social roots of
these conﬂ icts. They also make it clear that nothing less than the restructur-
ing of work and caretaking will allow new generations to achieve the ideals
they seek and provide the supports their own children will need.

c h a p t e r t w o

Families beyond the Stereotypes

There is no reason to doubt the old saw that the most important decision you make

is choosing your parents.

—David I. Levine

child views family life from below. Literally and ﬁ guratively,
children look up to their parents and other adults, drawing lessons

as they grow in size and awareness. Yet the lessons they draw often dif-
fer from their caretakers’ intentions. Children are active observers, not
passive absorbers of the information their social world conveys. Despite
adults’ best efforts, their actions can, and often do, have unintended
consequences.

The young women and men who were interviewed developed compli-

cated and nuanced reactions to their parents’ choices. Most drew unex-
pected lessons for their own lives from their parents’ decisions about work,
marriage, and child rearing. They often reinterpreted events and decisions
that once seemed right (or wrong) in a different light as time passed and
they gained a new perspective looking back. Most of all, my informants
saw their homes as works in progress, not as static “forms.” In the long
run, they focused on the longer-term consequences of parental choices, not
on the speciﬁ c form or type of home these choices produced at any one
moment in time.

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

Beyond Family Structure

Whether they judge family changes to be good, bad, or somewhere in
between, analysts and advocates engaged in the controversy over what is best
for children commonly focus on family “structures.” Some argue that any
family form diverging from the two-parent, homemaker-breadwinner house-
hold represents decline, while others counter that new family forms actually
represent creative adaptations to new social contingencies. But both perspec-
tives focus on family structure as the crucial arena of contention. Are children
better off when parents are together or apart? Do they suffer when mothers
hold a paid job or stay home? Do all children need two married biological
parents, or can they thrive with a diverse combination of loving caretakers?

Those who worry about the erosion of “traditional” families continue to

argue that permanent marriages, especially marriages with a clear division
between a home-centered mother and a breadwinning father, are the only
way to ensure a child’s healthy development. The most strident voices assert
that children are bound to suffer when women do not devote their lives to
their care and (heterosexual) couples are no longer compelled to marry and
stay together for their sake. But even less extreme versions of this perspec-
tive insist that working mothers, single parents, and both straight and gay
cohabiting couples promote moral decline by allowing adults to pursue nar-
row self-interest at the expense of new generations.

More progressive voices, including most feminists, counter that family life is

adapting, not declining, as it always has in the face of new social and economic
exigencies.

Children face new risks because an irreversible but still unfold-

ing revolution has left families without the supports they need, not because
adults have become more selﬁ sh. Since mothers in the workplace and new, more
voluntary forms of adult relationships are inescapable responses to deep-seated
social shifts, the danger lies not in individuals abandoning the right values but
rather in our collective failure to restructure workplaces and families to meet
new needs. This perspective locates the crux of the current crisis in our tendency
to give lip service to “valuing children” while failing to support real children
or the people entrusted with their care.

Blaming single parents and working

mothers merely creates scapegoats for conditions with far deeper social roots.

In the polarized “family values” debate, these contending views point to

different causes and different solutions, but they share a common focus on
family structure. Are biological parents together or apart? Does a mother
work or stay home? For the young people who spoke with me, however,
these conventional categories hold far less signiﬁ cance. Instead, as Figure 2.1
shows, my informants had diverse reactions to similar family arrangements.

fa m i l i e s b e y o n d t h e s t e r e o t y p e s

While almost eight out of ten of those with a work-committed mother see

this as the best option, those whose mothers did not work in a committed way
are more divided in their outlooks, with close to half wishing their mothers
had pursued a different path. When it comes to whether parents had stayed
together or not, my interviewees are also divided. While a slight majority
of those who lived in a single-parent home wish their biological parents had
stayed together, a signiﬁ cant minority believe a parental separation, while not
ideal, provided a better option than the alternative. Even more surprising,
while most of those who lived with both biological parents agree this was the
best arrangement, about four out of ten feel their parents might have been
better off apart. More often than not, generalizations drawing an unwavering
causal arrow between a household’s form and a child’s well-being shed limited
light on my informants’ experiences.

To understand their outlooks, we need

to look beyond the black box of these conventional categories and focus on the
reasons for—and the consequences of—their parents’ strategies and choices.

Mothers—and Fathers—at Work and at Home

As members of the ﬁ rst generation to watch a majority of their mothers join
the paid workforce, most of my interviewees had mothers with some work
experience, but only about half had mothers who worked in the sustained way

Work-committed

mother

Parents stayed

together

Parents separated

Domestic mother

Was best option

Preferred another

f i g u r e 2 . 1 Children’s views of parents’ work and marital choices, by mothers’
work status and parents’ marital status.

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

once reserved for men’s careers.

The rest subordinated part-time and inter-

mittent jobs to their domestic duties. Yet whether or not a mother became
strongly committed to work, these patterns evoked divided and ambivalent
responses from the children.

Children reared by a home-focused mother are especially divided, with

almost half concluding it would have been better if their mothers had worked
in a committed way. While 45 percent believe this arrangement gave them
special advantages, the rest disagree, concluding their mothers made unneces-
sary and ultimately counterproductive sacriﬁ ces. In contrast, almost four out
of ﬁ ve of those with work-committed mothers consider this the better—if
not perfect—alternative. Few have misgivings about a mother’s commitment
to work, and those who do are more likely to focus on the circumstances sur-
rounding a mother’s choice than the fact they held a paid job. All in all, most
do not believe they were—or would have been—better off had their mothers
stayed home.

Even though we can never know whether these conclusions are

“correct” in a strictly testable way, what counts is their belief in them.

having a home-centered mother

Why are children with a home-centered mother so divided? Gender provides
some of the explanation, with more than half of men but less than 40 percent
of women concluding that a mother at home was the best arrangement. Yet,
among women as well as men, those voicing the strongest support reported
that their families enjoyed an increasingly rare convergence of circumstances
that made traditional arrangements not just possible, but “good” for every-
one. Most crucial, their fathers were able to provide a stable ﬁ nancial base.
Adam grew up in an afﬂ uent, white suburb, where his father’s career as a den-
tist allowed his mother, who trained to become a nurse, to enjoy a far better
life than she could have achieved on her own:

My mom appreciates my father a lot. She lives a much nicer life than she
did when she was growing up. They live an ideal life almost, and I don’t
think either one of them takes advantage of it or believes in it more.

This logic made even more sense when a mother’s domesticity helped a father

succeed at work. Andrew’s parents’ “traditional marriage” worked to everyone’s
advantage, he reasoned, because his mother’s decision to put her teaching career
on hold helped his father rise to the vice presidency of a major corporation:

It was a very traditional marriage where mom gave up her career,
stayed home, and raised the kids, and dad went on with his career.

fa m i l i e s b e y o n d t h e s t e r e o t y p e s

And it worked because dad’s career really took off. So I wonder if the
marriage would not have been as successful if dad hadn’t been as suc-
cessful at his job.

A mother’s domesticity seemed even more preferable when she faced espe-

cially limited job opportunities. Nate believed his Latina mother’s foreshort-
ened education, poor job prospects, and failing health left her happier—and
better off—at home:

My mother dropped out at twelfth grade, and she used to work as a
home attendant part-time, but staying home and taking care of the
kids, that’s what she liked most. So she stopped working when she got
diabetic. She was more relaxed at home.

When fathers had promising work prospects and mothers did not, their

children are especially likely to believe everyone beneﬁ ted when a mother
stayed home. Growing up with a hardworking father who rose up the ladder
in hospital administration and a mother who seemed happy to leave her dead-
end job in a public welfare agency, Jason did not worry about his mother’s
well-being conﬂ icting with his own:

Staying home and taking care of us, I know she enjoyed that. She’s a
great mother, but I think she enjoyed it, too. So I never wished she
worked. I never wished she didn’t work, either, but she was working
as a mother, as a quote unquote housewife.

Yet others harbored strong doubts about a mother’s home-centered life.

In these cases, mothers did not ﬁ nd domestic life a welcome respite from the
world of work. Reared on a farm in the rural Northeast, Hannah listened to
her mother regularly complain—and blame her father—about lost chances
and roads not taken:

I hear about this ad nauseam! My mother was the ﬁ rst woman in the state
to be in agricultural engineering, so she was in the vanguard and had a lot
of opportunities. She was offered a grant to study, and it was this fabulous
opportunity, but she chose to marry my father, giving up the scholarship.
Her life would have gone in a totally different direction, and she looks
back now and blames my father for giving up this opportunity.

For some, a mother’s domesticity created undue ﬁ nancial pressures for

their husbands. Megan worried that her mother’s desires for a higher stan-
dard of living left her father, who worked as a salesman of stationary prod-
ucts, feeling embattled and inadequate:

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

My mother was always dissatisﬁ ed that she didn’t have more stuff. She
wanted my father to be more ambitious, and he wasn’t an ambitious
man. As long as he was supporting the family, it didn’t matter to him
if it was a bigger house or a bigger car. But forty years of being married
to a woman saying, “Why don’t we have more money?”—I think that
does something to your self-esteem.

Finally, many children believed they would have been better off with a

work-committed mother, even if their parents appeared satisﬁ ed. Reversing
the argument that stay-at-home mothers beneﬁ t their children, these young
women and men felt their mother’s single-minded devotion came with too
many strings attached. Hannah rued the double-edged quality of her moth-
er’s unabated attention:

She would become way too into her children’s lives and spend way too
much time paying attention to what we’re doing, and it became really
oppressive. If I made the mistake of telling her anything, it would be
all over town, as if I just won some blue ribbon or something.

Connie agreed. Even though her father’s jobs as a driver and supervisor at

a trucking company kept her family aﬂ oat, having a mother without a paid
job felt out of tune with the times. Her friends’ employed mothers seemed to
provide a better model as well as more ﬁ nancial support:

A lot of the kids, their mothers had already gone to work. It felt odd
to me that, “Well, what does your mother do? What do you mean she
stays home? What does she do?” And we didn’t have the money that
my friends had, either.

As they considered the pressures facing their frustrated mothers and

ﬁ nancially pressed fathers, the children of domestic mothers often con-
cluded that the costs ultimately outweighed the beneﬁ ts. Despite her
mother’s devotion and her father’s success as a stockbroker, Lauren gradu-
ally decided her father had been “an absentee parent” and her mother
found domesticity a dead-end street without a viable route to personal
happiness:

I liked having her around. But I would have liked her to have had more
enjoyment from it or more of a career track. My brother and I would
have been okay. As a kid, you don’t realize your parent’s unhappy.
I thought she just wanted to be a mom and carpool, and it turns out,
she didn’t want to do that at all.

fa m i l i e s b e y o n d t h e s t e r e o t y p e s

In the end, when mothers seemed unhappy at home or too involved in

their children’s lives, the cost of their “sacriﬁ ces” outweighed the presumed
beneﬁ ts.

support and sympathy for work-committed
mothers

Having a work-committed mother evoked much less ambivalence than having
a home-centered mother. Even though juggling jobs and families brought its
own set of pressures, women and men largely agree that employed mothers
provided a wealth of beneﬁ ts, with four out of ﬁ ve reaching this conclu-
sion.

Like those who wish their mothers had worked, these children often

believe that their mothers were ill suited to a life of domesticity or that their
fathers were unable—and, in some cases, unwilling—to provide a sufﬁ cient
and steady income. Some are grateful their mothers’ jobs provided a cushion
against the insecurities and vagaries of a labor market that left many fathers
without the stable jobs and generous incomes needed to support a family
on one paycheck. Others are grateful their mothers’ jobs provided support
amid the uncertainties of parental breakups that left them without a father’s
ﬁ nancial contributions. Dolores lived in a close-knit Latino family, with her
grandmother nearby to help out. When her father lost a series of jobs as a cab
driver and then a travel agent, her mother’s steady, full-time work as a seam-
stress kept the family from falling into poverty:

In my early childhood, my dad was going on and off with jobs, so my
mom was the core. It seemed totally natural. She didn’t want to be
home, and it kept the family stable.

Although Josh’s father did well as a carpenter, his mother’s additional

paycheck from her steady job as an ofﬁ ce manager made it possible for him
to go to college:

I had a lot of opportunities other people didn’t have, just because my
parents were willing to pay for my education. And that was because
of the two of them.

Mothers’ jobs were obviously critical when fathers made no contributions

at all. Faced with the challenge of rearing a child on her own at eighteen,
Samantha’s mother got a GED, went to college, and landed a job in data pro-
cessing. As the child of a single parent, Samantha felt cherished and inspired
by her mother’s devotion to providing them both with a better future:

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

She was working as long as I can remember. I remember her telling
me she wanted something better for me. She wanted to be able to give
me something better after everything we had been through. She lived
her life for me. Always.

Without diminishing the ﬁ nancial signiﬁ cance, children found additional

reasons beyond money to appreciate a mother’s paid work. These children
also concluded their mothers would have been dissatisﬁ ed and overly atten-
tive had they not had another place to direct their energies. Rachel knew her
mother needed another outlet for channeling her volatile temperament:

I’ve heard all that stuff about how children need a parent at home,
but I don’t think that having her stay home, particularly considering
her temper, would have been anything other than counterproductive.
Even though her sort of high-end administrative job is signiﬁ cantly
below her talent and intelligence, it’s better than the boredom and
anger if she was at home.

Patricia reached a similar conclusion about her mother, who ran a success-

ful business forecasting design trends:

I honestly don’t think I could deal with my mother twenty-four hours
a day. She’d be very smothering. Even with her job, she’d be like, “Oh,
I don’t have time to cook you brownies.” I’m like, “Mom, I wouldn’t
eat them anyway.” If I had to deal with someone like that all the time,
I’d go crazy.

Despite the popular fear that employed mothers deprive their children of

essential maternal attention, no one cited a mother’s job as a cause of neglect.
To the contrary, they were more likely to see working as an indication of a
mother’s love. Nancy did not believe her mother’s nursing career had any
costs for the family:

My mom would deﬁ nitely be working, pay or no pay, because she
just loves to work. But I didn’t feel we were lacking in anything. Any
extracurricular activity, she would be there. She was very supportive,
very generous, just always there, and she still is, no matter how much
of a devil me and my brother are.

Young women and men reared by work-committed mothers generally

perceive clear beneﬁ ts, which outweigh vague, hypothetical losses. Most are
proud of their mother’s work and appreciate how it allowed her, like fathers,
to be a “good” parent. But this widespread support for working mothers does

fa m i l i e s b e y o n d t h e s t e r e o t y p e s

not tell the whole story, because children also focus on the context in which
their mother’s work unfolded. The central issue is not whether their mother
held a job, but whether she received the support she needed at the workplace
and at home.

When mothers had good work opportunities and substantial help at home,

their children harbored few “ifs” or “buts” about their situation. Watching
her single mother move up the ladder at a large bank, Isabella took even more
pride than her mother did in this accomplishment:

I was always proud of my mother. I’m sure when she started out she
never imagined she would become executive treasurer of a bank. She
always says there’s tons of them in the company, but I say to her,
“Mom, you’re one of them!”

Having a father who shared the domestic load also relieved a child’s con-

cern. Raised in a two-earner home in a working-class, African-American
neighborhood, Serena took pride in knowing her parents were equal partners
in most ways:

She never felt overburdened because she was raising three kids and
working at the same time. I think because my father was equally
involved, it lessened the burden, so that made a big difference.

A mother’s work also seemed unproblematic when at least one parent had

a ﬂ exible work arrangement and a child had access to good child care. As a
ﬁ reﬁ ghter, Daniel’s father was able—and eager—to do far more than just ﬁ ll
in at home:

She wasn’t home to take care of us all the time, but my father was
always around for us. He’s a ﬁ reﬁ ghter and had a lot of free time. And
if she’d been home and been miserable, that would have made me mis-
erable. And I was always happy.

And Kristen enjoyed playing with friends and learning the alphabet in a

preschool while her mother worked full-time as a secretary:

I really enjoyed preschool. They taught me the ABC’s. And I had a
lot of friends. I got my social skills. So it was a good thing I went
to day care. I think that you learn a lot of social skills that are
important.

Of course, not everyone concurred with Daniel and Kristen. When moth-

ers hit a dead end on the job or got little support at home, concern and
appreciation coexisted. Children noticed when their mothers seemed unfairly

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

burdened with domestic work or unfairly treated in their paid jobs. Chrys-
tal’s father worked intermittently at a series of ill-fated ventures, while her
mother was “the one who’s always worked full-time,” holding a series of jobs
at a public social service agency. Although her mother seemed resigned and
even moderately satisﬁ ed being the family’s mainstay, Chrystal resented her
father for not doing his share:

My father’s ﬁ nancial contribution has always been sporadic. He’s more
of a hustler, where if there’s an easier way to do something, he’s gonna
ﬁ nd it. My mother’s been the breadwinner. So it’s unfair that my father
never did the cooking or cleaning or anything like that. It didn’t seem
to bother them, but I think it should have been more equal. It makes
no sense having one person do everything.

Children also felt shortchanged when excessive and inﬂ exible work

demands fell on mothers or fathers. Justin understood that his parents, Chi-
nese second-generation Americans who struggled to establish an economic
toehold in their adopted nation, had little choice but to put in long hours
running their family-owned restaurant, but he still wished his father had
been able to work less and spend more time with him:

I’m proud of both my parents. They worked really hard, and they’re
great people. But I was disappointed that I could not see my father
more. I understood, but I know that if I have a kid, I don’t want to
work that many hours.

With a single parent, Michael greatly admired his mother’s dedication to

her job as a college administrator, but he also resented her treatment by an
indifferent employer:

Work was her whole world, but her circumstances were really terrible.
She worked there for seventeen years, and instead of getting a promo-
tion, she was forced into retirement.

Women and men paid attention to the supports and obstacles their

employed mothers—and fathers—had faced. Were they bolstered by well-
rewarded, ﬂ exible work, opportunities to advance, supportive partners, and
good child care? Or were they, instead, left with dead-end jobs and the lion’s
share of caretaking? While children embraced the work ethic for their moth-
ers no less than for their fathers, they cared about whether the nature and
conditions of their parents’ jobs made it easier or harder to reconcile paid
work with the rest of life.

fa m i l i e s b e y o n d t h e s t e r e o t y p e s

looking beyond a mother’s work status

As they look back on their parents’ work strategies, young adult children
have far more intricate and reﬁ ned views than whether they were better off
with a stay-at-home or working mother. Having a home-centered mother
seems to have been the best option when she appeared satisﬁ ed and the family
could count on a father’s ﬁ nancial contributions; the wisdom of this strategy
appears suspect when a mother seemed ill suited for domesticity or a father
proved unable or unwilling to be a reliable breadwinner. While some endorse
a mother’s domesticity, others view this path as too costly.

Although children with work-committed mothers are more likely to con-

clude this was the best option, they also hold nuanced views. Far from feel-
ing neglected or put in second place, most appreciate their mothers’ efforts.
Employed mothers’ incomes contributed to their families’ standard of living,
sometimes shoring up a shaky ﬁ nancial base or preventing a fall into poverty
and more often providing opportunities that would not have been available.
Paid work also provided mothers, no less than fathers, with a crucial source of
self-esteem and personal gratiﬁ cation.

Yet even though most take pride in

having a work-committed mother, many also worry that their mothers—and
fathers—felt pressured and overwhelmed trying to “do it all.”

In the end, whether or not a mother held a paid job matters far less than

whether or not mothers and fathers were satisﬁ ed with their lives and with the
life they were able to provide for their children. Rather than pitting working
and stay-at-home mothers against each other, children consider the meaning
and context of their parents’ work experiences. As Kayla explained about her
upwardly mobile, dual-earning African-American parents, both of whom had
ﬂ exible schedules as college teachers, “If they’re happy, I’m happy.”

Parents Together and Apart

As in the larger society, slightly more than a third of my interviewees were
reared in a home with some form of lasting parental breakup. Yet their expe-
riences do not bear out the presumption that children always—or even usu-
ally—prefer any kind of marriage to seeing parents separate. While a slight
majority of those who lived in a single-parent home wish their biological
parents had stayed together, almost half believe parental separation was the
better course of action. More surprising, two-ﬁ fths of those whose parents
stayed together feel their parents might have been better off apart.

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

staying together, for better and worse

All things being equal, it is surely better to grow up with two parents who
remain strongly committed to each other. Yet all things are rarely equal.

Marriages take many forms, and my informants care more about how their
parents’ relationships developed than whether they stuck it out. Children
are grateful when their parents seemed satisﬁ ed and happy with each other,
but for many others, troubled marriages took a toll on everyone.

What made the difference? Marriages embodying an ethic of equitable

sharing, mutual respect, and strong commitment balanced with individual
autonomy appeared successful and satisfying. Growing up in a middle-class,
predominantly African-American suburb, Tasha watched her parents forge a
committed partnership that still left room for her mother to build a success-
ful career as a physical therapist and for her father to rise to the vice presi-
dency of a small bank. Asked to describe her parents’ marriage, she pointed
to an absence of domination:

[They’ve been] very happy [for] twenty-three years. They always seem
to have a really open relationship. My father never tried to dominate.
Neither did my mother. So they get along well with each other.

Angel’s parents struggled to make ends meet in an inner-city Latino

neighborhood, while Brandon enjoyed the afﬂ uence provided by a father who
rose to be an Episcopal archdeacon and a mother who worked as a hospital
administrator, but they both used the metaphor of sharing “ﬁ fty-ﬁ fty” to
explain the secret of their parents’ lasting relationship:

They’ve been together over thirty years. Through thick and thin, they
always ﬁ nd a way together because it was a ﬁ fty-ﬁ fty relationship.
(Angel)

They would argue at the dinner table, but over politics, not over any-
thing personal. It’s ﬁ fty-ﬁ fty. I think that’s wonderful. (Brandon)

Children drew different conclusions, however, when they believed their

parents’ marriages were either unfairly unequal or skewed too far in the direc-
tion of either too much closeness or too much separation. Leila resented how
her physician father relied on her mother, who worked full-time as a nurse,
to perform almost all of the domestic tasks:

Their relationship—having the wife have to do everything, like the
household chores and all that stuff—I wouldn’t want that.

fa m i l i e s b e y o n d t h e s t e r e o t y p e s

Alicia and Dolores considered even deeper inequalities and parental

estrangements. Alicia wondered how her mother managed to endure her
father’s obsessive gambling, while Dolores asked the same question about
her mother’s acceptance of her father’s not-so-secret inﬁ delity:

Even though my dad gambles, she’s not really a type to ﬁ ght. But I
wouldn’t put up with that. (Alicia)

My father had a “woman thing,” to say it nicely. She put up with it. I
could never be like that. You just have to be a certain person. I’m not
that person. I tell my husband every day, “Never!” (Dolores)

These women vowed they would not repeat the same pattern, but they

acknowledged the strength of their parents’ bond and did not question their
mother’s decision to stay rather than leave. Yet others reached a different
conclusion. These children came to harbor serious doubts about whether it
was best for their parents to have stayed together.

In traditional marriages, children worried their parents had, paradoxi-

cally, been both too dependent on each other and too separate. Megan viewed
her parents’ unexamined decision to stay together—despite their ongoing
battles over her mother’s displeasure with the size of her father’s paycheck—
as a sign of unhealthy attachment:

As a young kid, I guess I thought that they were happy together, but
now I see they just don’t like to be separated. They ﬁ ght, but they
spend all their time together. They’re very tied to each other—not
necessarily in a positive way. A kind of crazy symbiosis.

Ken reached a similar conclusion about his parents’ decision to stay

together, despite a brief separation triggered by his father’s “extramarital
goings-on.” The chasm between his father’s life as the owner of a small alu-
minum siding business and his mother’s domestic duties created a divide
that left his parents living in different worlds under the same roof:

They had typical male-female differences—two separate lives—
and didn’t really communicate or have a lot in common. My mom
didn’t have a lot of interests outside of the home, and my father,
because he had his own business, was very much a workaholic. So
there were disadvantages on both sides. My dad felt very much tied
down and couldn’t do what he enjoyed because my mother would
make him feel guilty, and my mother wasn’t happy because she felt
neglected and still does. So there were no winners in any of that
situation.

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

Yet traditional marriages held no monopoly on parental estrangement.

When problems arose in two-earner marriages, they were more likely to center
on disagreements about whether and how to share. These marital struggles took
a different form but were no less difﬁ cult to endure. When Michelle’s father,
a successful architect from a traditional Filipino family, opposed her mother’s
pursuit of an MBA and ﬁ nance career, their clash of wills created bitter and pro-
tracted battles that left her feeling they would have been better off apart:

My mom was a very independent person. My father was more tradi-
tional. It was a recipe for disaster. My parents really didn’t get along,
so I think they stayed together for the sake of my brother and me. They
tried not to ﬁ ght in front of us, but inevitably a ﬁ ght would break out
and there would be screaming and yelling. I would get scared; my
brother would get scared. It kind of ruined their lives.

Unresolved marital mismatches—whether they arose in traditional or

two-earner contexts—left children questioning the status quo as the best
course of action. As they watched conﬂ ict escalate, many began to wonder if
their parents had remained married for the wrong reasons. When Suzanne’s
father moved from the passive resistance of refusing to help at home to the
active use of verbal and physical intimidation, she wanted her mother to
assert more independence and control:

My dad would continuously badger and sometimes hit my mom. That’s
something that I can’t forgive in any way, shape, or form. She hasn’t
gotten treated fairly through the course of their marriage. I would
have wished, or do wish, for my mom to have more control over the
situation and over herself.

Watching his parents’ stay in their rocky marriage, Ken believed his

mother’s reluctance to leave represented a fear of emotional and ﬁ nancial inse-
curity, rather than an afﬁ rmation of her own or her children’s best interest:

For my mother, it was security of having the money from my father.
And maybe she had a low self-esteem and didn’t know she would ever
meet anyone else. I’ve always wondered, “Would it have been better
for them to divorce?” There’s been times that made me think divorce
would have been the best option.

Patricia did more than wonder if her parents should part. Frustrated

by her father’s refusal to do his fair share despite her mother’s demanding
career and equally plentiful ﬁ nancial contributions, she openly counseled her
mother to leave:

fa m i l i e s b e y o n d t h e s t e r e o t y p e s

My mom works full-time and takes care of all the bills and cooks
every night. My dad doesn’t do anything. My dad is not a horrible
person, but we’ve had a lot of problems. I get very angry. I’ve told her,
“Divorce him.”

When their parents’ marital troubles seemed intractable, my informants

are convinced they, too, might have been better off had their parents chosen
a different path. Regardless of the family structure, staying together “for the
sake of the kids” seems ill founded, at best, when parental estrangement and
conﬂ ict create a tension-ﬁ lled home. Jennifer believed her parents’ decision
to remain in an unhappy alliance, with both parents locked in narrow roles,
had not served their children well:

There were plenty of times that they should have gotten a divorce.
I know that. My dad knows it. My mother knows it but denies it.
They were staying together because they thought that my sister and
I needed them to be together when actually it was doing us no good.
Being together when you’re not working out didn’t beneﬁ t us in
any way.

And even though Chrystal’s mother worked steadily, her parents also

remained stuck in rigid domestic patterns, with her father silently refusing
to share the load and her mother exhausted but unwilling to ask for help. The
unacknowledged turmoil beneath their outwardly stable union left Chrystal
convinced that living in a two-parent home offered scant advantages:

We were close to the traditional deﬁ nition of a family, but we didn’t
act that way. I didn’t feel we were the Cleavers. I felt we were most of
the time a mess. So I think it was more stressful than if we’d been in a
single-parent household.

Looking back over the course of their parents’ marriages, children are more

concerned with the quality of the bond their parents forged than whether or
not their parents stayed together. When a lasting commitment nourished
each parent’s sense of self, children came to see the marriage as embody-
ing shared and interdependent lives, allowing parents and children alike to
thrive. But when unequal or rigid patterns undermined the partnership, chil-
dren questioned the wisdom of staying together “no matter what.”

While these conclusions may appear naive and speculative, a number of

studies attest to their validity. Researchers, too, have found a crucial dis-
tinction between high- and low-conﬂ ict marriages. Although children in
low-conﬂ ict marriages may not be better off when their parents part, those

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

in high-conﬂ ict marriages do not beneﬁ t when their parents stay together.
Examining the relationship between parents’ marital quality and children’s
psychological well-being, Paul Amato and Alan Booth conclude that “if par-
ents’ marital quality is high and stable, youth beneﬁ t; if it is of consistently
low quality or unstable in quality, youth are adversely affected.”

Children

agree with these ﬁ ndings, judging their family paths according to the quality
of their parents’ relationship and not their marital status.

the ambiguities of parental breakups

Like their peers who lived in homes with lasting marriages, the children of
divorced and single parents do not question the advantages of being reared
by two happily married parents. But they also understand the obvious: happy
marriages do not break apart, and their own parents were not happily mar-
ried. Viewing their parents’ actions through a different, more ambivalent,
lens, they do not compare their families to some hypothetical ideal. Instead,
they weigh the gains and losses of single parenthood and parental separation
against more realistic, if less than ideal, alternatives.

Of course, the children of single and divorced parents acknowledge

the obvious costs of parental breakups. Those old enough to comprehend
the news reacted with a mixture of anger, dismay, and self-blame. Even
though Tiffany now understands her father had serious personal difﬁ -
culties and eventually had to be hospitalized for emotional distress, at
the age of six, when she learned her father was leaving, she held herself
responsible:

Being twenty-ﬁ ve and looking back, I understand, but being a child
who wants her father, I felt that it was wrong, and I tried to get them
back together. I ﬁ gured since I didn’t understand, it must be me.

Those too young to remember the breakup had a delayed but similarly

strong response. Although Richard’s parents divorced when he was two,
his anger only emerged as he grew older and decided fate had given him a
raw deal:

I hated the fact that my mother left my father, and I remember feeling
miserable for a while. All of a sudden, I was in touch with how I was
so angry and bothered. It was just so unlucky, I felt.

Yet over time, many reached a different conclusion about the folly or

wisdom of their parents’ actions. What prompted a change of outlook? Their
long-term assessment depended on how the breakup inﬂ uenced their parents’

fa m i l i e s b e y o n d t h e s t e r e o t y p e s

ability—and willingness—to support and care for their families. When
fathers had been uninvolved or, in some cases, were hardly present, their
departure was barely missed, especially if children could count on mothers
and others for support and care. Shauna gave little thought to the fact that
she never knew her father, because her mother, a model of self-reliance, made
her feel secure:

I obviously knew that my biological father wasn’t there, but my mom
never gave me any type of thoughts that I needed a man to take care
of me. She was able to do it on her own, and she wanted to make sure
that her children would be able to, too.

Even though Phil’s father left much later, as he approached his teens,

it also seemed a minor shift. Since there had never been a strong bond, his
father’s departure seemed to conﬁ rm rather than change their distant and
tenuous relationship:

Ever since I was a little boy, I was raised, basically, in a one-parent
household. Even when my parents were married, my father wasn’t
there. He never came out to play or teach me how to ride a bike or
anything a father usually does, so I didn’t feel like I’d lost anything
when he left.

Others found change more apparent, but not necessarily more upsetting.

When parents in traditional marriages felt alienated by ill-ﬁ tting roles or
parents in dual-earner marriages were caught in an interminable struggle of
wills, a separation could offer relief along with sadness. In contrast to those
who watched as their parents continued to endure similar circumstances,
these children saw intransigent and destructive struggles give way to a sepa-
rate peace. Even though Erica faced the prospect of downsizing from her
large home in an afﬂ uent, leafy suburb, she was glad to see the end of “acting
out roles” that seemed inauthentic:

I was relieved. I never really sensed that they belonged together, so it
was kind of a moot point. They were sort of acting out the roles rather
than being involved. So by the time they got divorced, it was perfectly
natural to me.

In contrast to the quiet estrangement in what Erica described as her

“white-suburban” home, Anita’s more emotive Latino parents fought con-
stantly. As her father’s drinking increased along with his opposition to hav-
ing an employed wife, she was glad to escape the constant battles over her
mother’s need and desire to work:

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

I always knew this is the right thing because mommy and daddy
weren’t happy, and the way they were together was scary to me. It was
very sad, but I remember feeling a sense of relief that the tension, the
stress, the ﬁ ghting, the fear of what was going on with my parents
was over.

Although the causes of the breakups differed, the long-run consequences

framed everyone’s views. Did mothers, especially domestic mothers, get back
on their feet or not? Did fathers become more involved in their children’s
lives or less? If less, did the loss of a father’s—or, in some cases, a mother’s—
involvement seem to increase a family’s difﬁ culties or reduce them? The
aftermath ultimately shaped the child’s view. When caretakers did poorly on
their own, children suffered. When they did well, it greatly diminished the
costs. In the wake of his parents’ separation when he was eight, Alex drew
inspiration from seeing his mother grow stronger and more self-reliant as she
shifted from working as a part-time waitress to supporting her family as a
writer:

In retrospect, I was pretty happy seeing my mother on her own take
care of our family. That always made me feel like she was strong, which
made me feel good because she was able to do it. My mother is one of
the stronger people I know, and I think part of that has to do with [the
fact that] she went through something that was really difﬁ cult and
was able to handle it.

Observing her parents move from a contentious two-earner marriage,

both as naval ofﬁ cers, to a far more friendly joint-custody arrangement,
Danisha agreed their decision to part had been the right one:

You miss your parents being together, but some people are better
off being friends. They have strong personalities, a clash of wills, so
I think that I got the best of both of them. After they broke up, they
had a good relationship with each other and with me. That’s why
I think I’m well adjusted.

looking beyond marital status

Because neither lasting marriages nor parental breakups are static events,
making a simple contrast between the two prevents us from seeing how
apparently discrete decisions about whether to stay together or break up are
just one part of a longer process. To the children who watched this process

fa m i l i e s b e y o n d t h e s t e r e o t y p e s

unfold, the direction of their family trajectories matters more than any one
distinct choice. Seemingly similar choices could evoke different reactions
depending on their aftermaths. While most lasting marriages sparked admi-
ration, marriages that remained mired in conﬂ ict or disaffection called forth
less sanguine responses. Those who experienced a parental breakup had simi-
larly diverse reactions; some could ﬁ nd no silver lining, but most felt a mix
of emotions.

Whether their parents stayed together or separated, children focused on

why they made the decision and what consequences it held for all. Traditional
and dual-earning marriages appeared worthwhile when they seemed beneﬁ -
cial to both parents, but each arrangement had a less worthy cast if either
parent suffered appreciably. Too much dependency and too much separa-
tion can both seem problematic in breadwinner-homemaker marriages,
while two-paycheck marriages can stalemate over struggles about “who
should be doing what.” In the case of single-parent homes, some children
marked their parents’ breakup as the beginning of a downward spiral for
those left behind, but others saw it as a chance for their families to escape
difﬁ culties and pursue new, more uplifting possibilities. Making dichoto-
mous distinctions between “intact” and “broken” homes cannot capture
these subtle shadings or explain how children derive lessons for building
their own lives.

Families as Diverging Pathways

Children are the most important recipients of their parents’ wisdom or folly,
and parental decisions can reverberate in unpredictable ways. No matter how
carefully considered, parental choices can and often do have unexpected con-
sequences. My informants learned lessons their parents had not intended to
convey. Any speciﬁ c parental decision, whether it involved changing their
work, marital, and child-rearing arrangements or staying the course, could
evoke very different reactions. Seemingly similar actions took place in dif-
ferent contexts and held different consequences for both the parents and
their children. While some described their families as having fairly ﬁ xed
arrangements, many more experienced transitions—sometimes abrupt and
sometimes gradual—from one family environment to another. From com-
mon starting points, families’ divergent pathways confound our conventional
stereotypes about the differences between “traditional” and “nontraditional”
homes.

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

breadwinner-homemaker families
with contrasting fates

Alex and Joel both describe homes that shared a consistently “traditional”
form, but their families moved in quite different directions as they grew to
adulthood.

At twenty-seven, Alex looks back on what appears to be a remarkably
stable childhood, especially compared to those of his friends. He grew
up in a small Midwestern city, where his mother stayed home until he
and his sister began school and then worked part-time as a volunteer
school assistant and substitute teacher. In Alex’s words, she “worked
for fulﬁ llment, not money.” Although she occasionally spoke about
how her youthful dream of joining the Foreign Service came to an end
when, upon submitting her application, she was told “women need
not apply,” the satisfaction she found in marriage and motherhood
seemed to offset this disappointment.

If Alex’s mother hit a glass ceiling long before he was born, his

father enjoyed a trip up the corporate ladder. After law school, he
joined a small company and gradually rose to a vice presidency. As the
undisputed breadwinner, his father devoted long hours to the ofﬁ ce,
but this effort paid off when a ﬂ ourishing career provided growing
ﬁ nancial support for everyone. In the end, Alex believes “they both
beneﬁ tted [from] clear roles,” although he also wonders how each
might have felt if his father’s career had not been so successful. As he
put it, “I’ve kind of wondered what they could have achieved if things
had been different, and I’m sure mom has the same question.”

Now a young adult, Alex is single, working in a small invest-

ment ﬁ rm, and applying to business school. Well past the age when
his parents married and began building their life together, Alex has
no regrets about his slower pace. Although he respects his parents’
arrangement, he has little desire to replicate it. “That was my parents’
decision about the distribution of tasks, but I don’t expect to do the
same.” Instead, he “wants a more equal relationship than my parents.”
But given today’s fast-paced, time-demanding workplace, he worries
about having to make sacriﬁ ces, either at home or work, that his father
never faced.

A set of increasingly rare economic and social circumstances insulated

Alex’s family from the changes taking place in other children’s lives. His
father met few roadblocks on an upwardly mobile career, with its attendant

fa m i l i e s b e y o n d t h e s t e r e o t y p e s

ﬁ nancial beneﬁ ts, and his mother enjoyed—and rarely complained about—her
more domestic path. In the context of a stable marriage, where both partners
found contentment, this clear delineation of different tasks and responsibili-
ties seemed to work, even though Alex does not wish it for himself.

Joel’s parents also chose to divide home and work according to a tradi-

tional gender calculus, but he has a very different perspective on his family
pathway.

Joel lived in a white, working-class suburb with the feel of a small
town, where two-parent families and stay-at-home moms were the
norm, even in what he knew to be changing times. Like Alex, he lived
with his parents and two brothers, including a twin born six minutes
after his arrival. On the surface, little change took place over the years.
Joel’s father had held the same job selling medical equipment for a
small company for as long as he could remember. His mother took odd
jobs from time to time, and occasionally expressed a wish to return
to the teaching career she relinquished when the twins were born.
When his younger brother arrived, however, she felt a responsibility
to focus her attention full-time on her home and children. Even now,
with Joel and his twin gone and his younger brother away at college,
her daily routine of housecleaning and cooking has remained largely
unchanged.

Joel had a stable childhood, but not a happy home. As the years

passed, his parents remained committed to their respective roles, but
they also became increasingly disheartened in their separate lives and
distant as a couple. His mother rarely strayed far from home, while
his father spent long hours at the ofﬁ ce, yet neither seemed inspired
by their pursuits. To the contrary, Joel gradually came to suspect his
father’s time at work, which hardly signiﬁ ed a love of his job, was
actually a way to avoid being home. Even worse, his father had mount-
ing concerns about layoffs that might leave him jobless and his family
without “a roof over our heads.” Meanwhile, Joel’s mother remained
dedicated to her home and children, but grew increasingly unhappy in
her marriage and her domestic world.

To Joel’s eyes, his parents were stuck “in a rut” that grew deeper

and took a growing toll as time passed. As he put it, “they’ve grown
into their routine and just accept daily life and let life go on as it
always will, but I don’t think they’re happy.” At twenty-two, Joel
worries his parents will never escape the conﬁ nes of their seemingly
self-imposed roles. He feels distant from his father, who recently had

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

to downshift when his company hit tough economic times and seems
“defeated” in his career. His mother’s disappointments have left him
feeling vaguely “guilty” and even a bit “selﬁ sh.”

Looking forward, Joel wonders how his parents will cope when

his younger brother leaves home and no longer ﬁ lls the spaces created
by an estranged and unhappy partnership. As for his own future, Joel
has no desire to re-create a similar pattern, saying “I don’t think I’d
model my life after my parents, because happiness is more important.”
But he worries about his chances of pursuing other options. As a good
student with an artistic bent, he hopes to avoid the track of a “main-
stream” job, which he now believes offers few intrinsic satisfactions
and only illusory security. Concluding that his father was betrayed by
an employer who did not deliver on the promise of lifetime loyalty, he
plans to become a designer who can rely on skills no one can take away.
When it comes to relationships, he is hopeful, but in no hurry. It will
take time, he reasons, to ﬁ nd the right partner and build the more bal-
anced, mutual give-and-take his parents were unable to create.

Joel’s story shows how parents who try to avoid the risks of change may

face even greater risks. Since even stable marriages face unexpected chal-
lenges, the effort to remain steadfastly committed to earlier patterns can
bring its own unavoidable but unfortunate consequences. Joel believed his
parents’ marriage became entangled in patterns that ultimately did not work
for either. Looking back, he wonders about the road not taken. Would his
mother have been happier had she not felt so responsible at home? Would
his father have been able to ﬁ nd a more satisfying job—and become a more
involved parent as well—if he had not felt it was his duty to bring home
the only paycheck? Would a separation, with all its difﬁ culties, have offered
both a chance to consider more satisfying ways of living—either together
or apart? He’ll never know the answers to these questions, but he believes
such an unknown journey, whatever the outcome, would have been worth
the effort because it represented an active choice rather than two lives lived
by default.

Although Alex’s and Joel’s homes had similar—and apparently unchang-

ing—forms, this resemblance is misleading. In fact, they followed dramati-
cally different paths, with contrasting meanings and consequences. Alex
believes his parents’ early decisions about “separate roles” proved to be sat-
isfying and efﬁ cacious; but Joel thinks his stay-at-home mother became
demoralized at home, his breadwinning father became frustrated at work,
and they both became estranged from each other. While Alex’s home lived up

fa m i l i e s b e y o n d t h e s t e r e o t y p e s

its stable image, the apparent stability of Joel’s family masked a downward
track that left him feeling uneasy and disheartened. Yet despite his family’s
more satisfying trajectory, Alex agrees with Joel about his own aspirations.
Both hope their lives will strike a more equal balance between home and
work than their parents achieved.

divergent paths after parental breakups

Nina and Mariela also reached different conclusions about a shared experi-
ence, but in their case, it involves a parental breakup, not a stable marriage.

A child of international ancestry, Nina’s father, a Mexican-American,
met her Japanese mother when he was stationed in Japan during his
years as an Army ofﬁ cer. The details of their courtship are sketchy, but
by the time Nina and her older sister were born, her mother had joined
her father in the United States, where they married and settled down
in a small apartment in a mid-sized Eastern city.

In those early years, Nina lived in a quiet, if overly strict, home

reﬂ ecting her father’s fondness for military discipline and, in her
words, “an order of command with him at the top.” While her father
launched a budding career as an entrepreneur, her mother struggled
to learn English and adjust to her adopted home. Though her mother
remained uneasy about venturing into public places, she loved taking
care of her children and tending to her home.

At seven, however, Nina’s father abruptly disappeared, dissolving

the predictable order of her early years and undoing her ﬁ nancial secu-
rity. Over the years, she learned her father had left her mother for
another woman, but her ﬁ rst memories are of her mother’s distress
and her family’s descent into poverty. Nina’s father refused to offer
any economic support, and her mother, unsure of herself and with no
work experience, shied away from seeking a paid job. Within months,
they were evicted from Nina’s childhood home and went on public
assistance.

Over the years, matters barely improved. Nina’s mother remained

fearful of joining the workplace, and her occasional forays into the
labor market never produced much. Though her mother never man-
aged to get on her feet, her father moved across the country and “struck
it rich,” but refused to share his good fortune with the family he left
behind. He had never been close to his daughters, and they lost all
contact for many years.

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

Despite these difﬁ culties, Nina could always count on her mother’s

devotion and kindness. Determined to make her mother proud, she
excelled at school and made her way through college by working full-
time and taking out loans. Today, she is on the management track at a
large bank, where she hopes to qualify for a program that will ﬁ nance
her MBA. She lives with her long-time boyfriend, who, unlike her
father, does all the cooking and is “amazingly nurturing.” Determined
to avoid the decisions that left her mother so unprepared, she insists
on separate bank accounts and makes certain to pay all the bills. Her
love and respect for her mother remains undiminished, but she has no
desire to repeat her “mistakes.” She has also rebuffed all of her father’s
recent attempts to get back in touch.

Mariela’s parents also broke up, but she does not share Nina’s concerns

about a downward spiral in its aftermath. Instead, looking back, she sees
their separation as a turning point that marked the beginning of changes
offering relief in the short run and a happier and more supportive home in
the long run.

Life did not begin auspiciously for Mariela. She spent her preschool
years in a housing project in a poor Latino neighborhood, where she
shared a small apartment with her parents and two older brothers. Her
most vivid memories, however, are not of the economic privation or
crowded conditions, but the escalating conﬂ ict between her parents
and her mother’s outbursts of rage, followed by absences for days and
sometimes weeks at a time. As the years passed, the departures grew
longer and the returns briefer and more rancorous.

By Mariela’s sixth birthday, her mother’s appearances had grown so

infrequent and unpredictable that, for all practical purposes, she had
dropped out of her daughter’s life. Mariela later learned her mother
had moved in with another man, but this detail hardly mattered at
the time. What did matter was having her father to lean on. Always
a devoted and gentle presence amid the cacophony of her mother’s
tirades, he assumed sole care of Mariela and her two older brothers
long before her mother departed. With his earnings as a worker in a
local box factory, he also supported their steady, if modest, standard
of living.

A calm seemed to settle over Mariela’s household after her mother

left for good. She missed her mother, but was relieved to see her father
relax. He became an even more dedicated parent, who rushed home
every evening to cook the family meals and tuck her in at night. Her

fa m i l i e s b e y o n d t h e s t e r e o t y p e s

parents’ breakup also set the stage for better things to come. Several
years later, her father brought a “friend” home to meet the family,
but Mariela sensed this woman was much more than that. When her
father announced plans to marry, Mariela’s ﬁ rst reaction was fear she
would lose her treasured place as “daddy’s little girl.” But it did not
take long for her doubts to fade. Mariela’s stepmother took her shop-
ping for clothes, helped with her homework, and generally became a
warm and reassuring family member. She became, in Mariela’s words,
“my real mother.”

Mariela’s new mother continued to pursue a promising career at a

large insurance ﬁ rm. As she ascended the managerial ladder, her rising
income changed the family’s economic fortunes. They moved out of
their small apartment and into a spacious house in a quiet neighbor-
hood with backyards and tree-lined streets. In these expanded quarters,
Mariela welcomed new twin brothers, an occasion which prompted her
father to stay home for several years while her stepmother temporarily
assumed the job of sole breadwinner.

More than a decade later, Mariela still draws on the support of a

warm, bustling “blended” family. Her estranged mother contacts her
from time to time, usually with expressions of regret, but Mariela pre-
fers to keep a polite distance. Their occasional meetings only heighten
her appreciation for the family she gained after her parents parted.
Now enrolled in a community college program offering real-world
experience in a variety of job settings, she is taking classes, working
as an intern in a ﬁ nancial services company, and preparing to move on
to a four-year college. After college, she hopes to work full-time for
as long as it takes to establish a foothold in some not yet determined
career, with marriage and children to follow only when she gains
enough experience to feel conﬁ dent about her economic prospects and
her ability to choose the right partner. Mariela harbors few misgivings
about her parents’ breakup. The end of her parents’ marriage not only
brought relief to a household mired in conﬂ ict, but it also allowed
her father to create a better life for himself and his children. In the
aftermath of her parents’ separation, her fortunes improved beyond all
reasonable expectation.

The accounts of Nina and Mariela, like those of Alex and Eric, illus-

trate how children can draw very different lessons from apparently similar
experiences. In this case, family breakups, not stable marriages, had differ-
ent consequences and held different meanings. While Nina’s home seemed

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

stable, if rule-laden, before her father’s departure, Mariela’s was suffused
with hostility. While Nina’s father left without warning, Mariela was not
surprised when her mother moved out for good. Most important, Nina’s
father left his family economically bereft, and her mother was ill prepared
to step into this unexpected breach. Mariela’s father, in contrast, continued
to be a devoted caretaker and breadwinner and was also able to create a new
marriage with far more emotional and economic stability. In short, Nina’s
family never recovered from her father’s economic and emotional abandon-
ment, while the departure of Mariela’s mother set the stage for new—and
better—possibilities.

different trajectories for dual-earner homes

In contrast to Nina and Mariela, Justin and Serena were reared in homes with
two parents who stayed married. Unlike Alex and Eric, they both had par-
ents who shared responsibility for breadwinning. Yet Justin and Serena also
had quite different reactions to ostensibly similar homes. Justin looked back
on his parents’ two-income arrangement with decided ambivalence, while
Serena felt nothing but enthusiasm.

With a name seemingly drawn from an Irish novel, Justin is
Chinese-American. Many decades ago, his grandparents left Taiwan in
search of better opportunities and settled in California, where his par-
ents met and married. Although they lived in what Justin described
as a “Chinese enclave,” he and his brother attended public schools,
played Little League, and “generally became American.”

As far back as Justin can remember, his parents focused on achiev-

ing “the American dream” of afﬂ uence. They bought, managed, and
sold a series of small restaurants in search of this elusive goal. Justin
did his homework in a restaurant kitchen or at a dining table until his
mother shifted to doing the bookkeeping, which allowed her to stay
home in the evenings. Justin’s father, in contrast, always left the house
early in the morning and usually returned long after his sons had gone
to bed.

Despite their dedication, his parents’ efforts at work never

seemed to pay off as they had hoped. Their restaurants wavered
between “just getting by” and “failing,” and the tensions of working
so many hours just to make ends meet took their toll. Justin never
worried about losing his home or not being able to go to college,
but he did worry about the pressures on his mother, whose single-

fa m i l i e s b e y o n d t h e s t e r e o t y p e s

handed efforts to carry the load at home left her weary and demor-
alized, and on his father, whose limited rewards for his long work
days left him distant and moody. As Justin put it, “I was slightly
upset that I could not see my father more—because I understood,
but also because it depends on the mood he’s in. And it got worse as
work [went] downhill.”

At twenty-eight, Justin is married and working at an investment

bank, where his employers demand as many hours as any of his par-
ents’ restaurants. He hopes to make enough money to help his parents
in retirement and then ﬁ nd a less time-intensive job, perhaps as a
teacher, so he can be a different kind of husband and father. As he
puts it, “I can’t model my relationship on my parents. My mother
wasn’t very happy. There was a lot of strain on her, and so I’m trying
to change that.” But Justin worries that this hope of reducing his work
effort may be just as fanciful as his parents’ dream of ﬁ nancial plenty.
“If I could, I would work a few days a week, and Caroline would work
the other days, and we would share equally. I would be extremely
happy, and she would be extremely happy, but the chances are a lot less
than ﬁ fty percent. I’m talking about Godzilla coming to New York
City . . . that kind of chance.”

Justin’s dual-earner home was marked by intractable difﬁ culties, but Ser-

ena tells a different story, even though both her parents worked as steadily
as Justin’s. While the combination of boundless work pressures and mount-
ing ﬁ nancial uncertainty left Justin’s mother doing double duty, his father
feeling defeated, and his parents distracted and disengaged, Serena’s parents
achieved a different balance in their lives and relationship. Her parents found
enough success and ﬂ exibility at work and gave enough support to each
other at home to build an emotionally supportive and economically secure
household.

Serena grew up in a predominantly African-American neighborhood
on the edge of suburbia, where most families managed to avoid poverty,
but only by “just getting by.” With both parents steadily employed,
Serena and her siblings, an older sister and younger brother, never
experienced the insecurity haunting many of her friends. Although
she now understands that her family enjoyed a modest standard of liv-
ing, her parents owned their home and planned for all the children to
go to college. Compared to many of her friends, she felt economically
privileged, even upper-class.

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

Serena’s parents shared the work of earning a living and running

the household, seemingly with little rancor and generous amounts of
goodwill. Her mother worked as an administrator in a large social ser-
vice agency, and Serena took pride in her mother’s rise from the secre-
tarial ranks to a position of inﬂ uence. Her father never went to college,
but his unionized job driving a truck brought secure employment, a
decent wage with good beneﬁ ts, and enough ﬂ exibility to shepherd
his children between school, dance lessons, and soccer practices. While
neither parent commanded a huge income, their joint earnings enabled
Serena and her siblings to attend a nearby parochial school and to aim
for some distant colleges largely out of reach to her friends.

At twenty-six, Serena is now a college graduate juggling work as a

counselor in the corrections department of a large city with graduate
classes in psychology. Although she never doubted her parents’ devo-
tion to their children or each other, she looks back on her childhood
with even more appreciation. Even though her mother’s work meant
she couldn’t always be around, Serena never gave it much thought and
certainly does not question the wisdom of this choice. She knows her
mother’s work ethic gave her a rich life beyond motherhood and, like
her father’s work commitment, provided critical contributions to the
family’s well-being. She also values the time her father took to care for
his children and feather their shared family nest. As she surveys the
difﬁ culties facing so many of her childhood friends, she is grateful for
the support she took for granted. Her parents’ commitment to their
children, their jobs, and each other provides an example of what she
hopes to create in the years ahead. She declares that “I actually use my
parents as a model for my relationships.”

Serena sees nothing to criticize in her parents’ arrangement. Far from feel-

ing shortchanged, she takes pride in her mother’s work accomplishments and
the opportunities two incomes made possible. In the context of her mother’s
full-time work, her father’s ﬂ exible job, egalitarian spirit, and enthusiasm for
involvement in his children’s lives allowed everyone to avoid the pitfalls and
enjoy the advantages of a dual-earner home.

While Serena believes her parents were able to build a sharing partnership

that nurtured a close relationship with each other and their three children,
Justin wishes he had had more time with his parents and there had been less
conﬂ ict between them. Unable to rely on jobs with steady incomes and clear
time boundaries, his parents both seemed overburdened, albeit in different
ways. His father spent too much time and energy chasing elusive monetary

fa m i l i e s b e y o n d t h e s t e r e o t y p e s

riches, while his mother strained under the weight of juggling her job and
caring for two sons. Justin’s parents lacked the ﬂ exibility that enabled Serena’s
two-worker arrangement to thrive.

Family Paths, Gender Boundaries,

and Work-Family Strategies

These narratives show how families can take divergent pathways even
when they appear to share a similar form. Although static concepts such as
“homemaker-breadwinner,” “dual-earner,” and “single-parent” tend to domi-
nate the debate about family and gender change, children can have different
experiences and different responses to growing up in families with appar-
ently similar “structures.” Over time, similar “types” of households can fol-
low different paths, and children reared in different types of homes can share
a similar outlook on how well or poorly their families fared. Children take
account of the context in which family relationships unfold, and the lessons
they ultimately draw from their experiences depend on the longer-term con-
sequences of their parents’ and others’ choices. In the long run, children view
their families as pathways, not as static types.

Family paths can, and usually do, head in unexpected directions. Alex

and Serena both had families that followed stable trajectories offering con-
sistent support, even though Alex lived in a traditional home and Serena’s
had a more equal division of breadwinning and caretaking. Most young
people, however, now grow up in families that undergo signiﬁ cant change
and take unpredictable turns. Among my interviewees, change could be
gradual or abrupt, and it could involve the erosion of support or its expan-
sion. Eric perceived increasing difﬁ culty, even though his parents’ tradi-
tional arrangement seemed stable, while Justin had the same reaction to
his parents’ two-income household. The sudden and unexpected breakup of
Nina’s parents triggered a downward shift from which her home was never
able to recover. Yet similar events marked a more positive turning point
for Mariela, whose home life seemed to improve steadily after her parents
parted.

Rather than focusing on their family’s form, the young adults who

shared their lives with me care about whether and how their homes either
came to provide stability and support or, alternatively, failed to do so. As
Figure 2.2 shows, about a third recounted consistently stable and support-
ive homes, while a quarter described families who grew more supportive as

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

time passed. Taken together, slightly more than half believe their homes
remained or became generally harmonious, supportive, and secure over
time.

For slightly less than half, however, family life did not remain stable or

improve. Just under one in ten had a home where chronic problems, such as
high parental conﬂ ict, low parental morale, or abiding economic insecurity,
never seemed to subside, while another third felt their family support erod-
ing as they grew. These family paths either remained riven with difﬁ culty
or moved in this direction. In the long run, what matters is whether a child
experienced high or increasing support or, in contrast, enduring or rising
troubles.

These diverse experiences also show how the direction of a family path

is not clearly linked to a family’s type. As Figure 2.3 shows, those reared in
homes that became “traditional” are almost equally divided about whether
this arrangement helped to expand or erode their security. Children in homes
that ultimately depended on a single parent are also divided in their out-
looks. About 56 percent recounted an eroding family path, but the remain-
ing 44 percent recalled how domestic life got better after a parental breakup.
Most children raised in homes that remained or became dual-earner agree
that this arrangement offered stable or rising support, but close to a quarter
do not. Across all of these family types, children focused on whether or not
their families provided emotional and economic support, mutually respectful
relationships, and caring bonds.

If family form provides such limited clues about how children view their

family experiences, what does? Across different family forms, the work-family
strategies of parents (and other caretakers) are central to shaping the direc-
tion of their family pathway.

Most families faced unanticipated events that

undermined rigidly divided ways of organizing breadwinning and caretak-
ing. Gender ﬂ exibility gave all types of families a wider array of options and

Continuing stability (32%)

Chronic conflict or insecurity (8%)

Expanding support (24%)

Eroding support (36%)

f i g u r e 2 . 2 Perception of family pathways.

fa m i l i e s b e y o n d t h e s t e r e o t y p e s

resources to respond to these challenges. The ability and willingness to cross
and blur the boundaries between earning a living and caring for others pro-
vides the key to understanding why some homes became more supportive
and others less so.

As we will see, parental strategies for apportioning domestic and paid

work shaped the paths families took. When parents and other caretakers
transgressed gender boundaries, they were able to develop innovative ways
to support their children. When parents clung to strictly drawn distinctions
between women’s and men’s capacities and responsibilities, they were less
able to respond to men’s eroding place as the family’s main breadwinner and
women’s declining ability and desire to be home-centered caretakers.

Traditional

division

Shared

breadwinning

Single parents

Stable or expanding

support

Chronic problems or

eroding support

f i g u r e 2 . 3 Perceptions of family support, by household destination.

c h a p t e r t h r e e

The Rising Fortunes of
Flexible Families

ven when family life gets off to a bumpy start, as it did for many of
my interviewees, it can take a turn for the better. For about two-ﬁ fths,

family life began with serious difﬁ culties, ranging from economic distress to
severe parental depression and conﬂ ict. But among this group, two-thirds
(or a quarter of all those interviewed) believe their homes ultimately became
supportive and secure. Dwayne’s family hit “rock bottom” when his father
left and the household descended into poverty:

Whether it was two parents or one, I just thought life was a struggle.
We were at rock bottom, so it could only get better.

Early domestic difﬁ culties can take many forms, from a clearly unhappy

parent to pervasive marital discord to severe economic uncertainty to neglect,
abandonment, and mistreatment. Among those with improving family for-
tunes, most experienced some combination of these domestic woes early on.
By the time they reached adulthood, however, all of these young people had
a far more optimistic outlook. When Dwayne was twenty-four, his family
seemed “on top of the world, maybe with little minor setbacks, but still on
top of the world,” and Josh (whose experiences were introduced earlier) saw
his household shift from one saturated with parental hostility and estrange-
ment to a close-knit, supportive home:

[Things got] happier, simple as that. It got better as it went along.
Now it’s very, very good. It’s good that the good part came last.

t h e r i s i n g f o r t u n e s o f f l e x i b l e fa m i l i e s

Why did these children develop more positive outlooks on their family’s

support system and their own life chances? By developing more ﬂ exible ways
of working and providing care, custodial parents, whether married or single,
overcame a variety of domestic crises and created more economically stable
and emotionally supportive homes.

Domestic Impasses

Like Tolstoy’s unhappy families who are all unhappy in different ways, the
homes of those with severe family difﬁ culties in their early years varied in com-
position, class position, and the problems they faced. A ﬁ fth had single moth-
ers, but the rest lived with two parents. Close to 55 percent had an employed
mother, but the remaining 45 percent started out with mothers who did not
hold a steady job. Almost two-thirds lived in working-class homes, many of
which faced severe economic insecurity and skirted the edge of poverty, but
more than a third had access to middle-class economic and social resources.

Some families faced breadwinning crises as fathers found themselves

unable or unwilling to provide needed economic support. Others faced care-
taking conundrums as mothers became unhappy at home and unsuited to
full-time motherhood. Still others coped with a conﬂ ict-saturated home or
an uncaring parent who could be distant, neglectful, even abusive. All these
domestic difﬁ culties involved some kind of impasse that undermined the
ability of fathers to be “good providers” or nurturers and home-centered
mothers to provide needed ﬁ nancial and emotional support.

not-so-good providers

Although being a “good provider” remains central to cultural deﬁ nitions of
what it means to be a responsible, successful father, it has become increasingly
difﬁ cult to live up to its tenets.

When a father could not or would not comply,

families who relied solely or primarily on a male earner were pushed into difﬁ cult
waters. Growing up in Texas, Miranda found her father’s enduring employment
woes painful to watch, especially because his liabilities as an entrepreneur stood
in contrast to his devotion as a parent. Despite his love of his family, his failed
efforts to build a business and his refusal to give up on “impossible dreams” left
her and her mother coping with what seemed like impending calamity:

My dad was one of those followers of dreams—he wanted to have his
own business, didn’t want to be anyone’s employee—but things did

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

not turn out the way he expected. He is totally lovable, but he was a
mess ﬁ nancially. Things would look okay and then all of a sudden my
mother would ﬁ nd out we were seven months behind on the mortgage.
It felt like every time you made a step forward, you end up getting
hit with something else. The most obvious thing was the economic
instability, but it created so much instability in the family ’cause we
were so busy just trying to survive each day.

A father’s resistance to acknowledging his limitations or to sharing the

responsibility for providing income compounded these economic woes. Anita
sensed her mother’s frustration with a husband who was unable to work
steadily but nevertheless opposed her desire to take a job:

He was a very stubborn man, very macho and controlling, so he
objected to my mother going to work. [He said] there’s no way she’s
going to emasculate him. But with the drinking and just his lack of
responsibility, he was jumping around from job to job. So she ﬁ nally
had to put her foot down and got a waitressing job.

If having a father at home provided little guarantee of economic security,

having a father who departed the household left children far more vulnerable.
In these cases, a parental breakup precipitated an acute ﬁ nancial crisis. When
Donna was still a preschooler, her father’s abrupt departure left her mother
with no job and three children to support:

My father was into hanging out, and my mother was home with three
kids. He put my mother down for everything. One day he brought her
to a lawyer’s ofﬁ ce and said “I want a divorce.” And he was gone just
like that [snaps ﬁ ngers]. We had to go on welfare for, like, two years.

Louise was too young when her father left to remember his presence, but

years later she learned that her family’s early precarious ﬁ nances stemmed
from his refusal to provide child support:

My mother used to say, “I wish I could, but I can’t get you what you
want.” I found out later that child support was awarded and never
received.

Still others faced a different set of problems. When a father’s occupational

success demanded too much time, economic security and material afﬂ uence
came with a price. As a lawyer for a major corporation, Paul’s father rose
quickly up the ranks and supported his family in style, but his long days at
the ofﬁ ce left Paul feeling he had a parent who was “missing in action”:

t h e r i s i n g f o r t u n e s o f f l e x i b l e fa m i l i e s

The biggest problem was Dad working all the time. The work really was
a big drain on his time. Typically, he wouldn’t get home until nine o’clock
or later, and then he’d be out the door before we were up to go to school.

Some families could not rely on a father’s job to keep them ﬁ nancially

aﬂ oat, while others had problems when his work demanded too much. Too
much reliance on a father’s paycheck created vulnerabilities for everyone.

not-so-happy homemakers

Like fathers who found it hard to live up to the “good provider” standard, some
of my interviewees had mothers who were unhappy at home and frustrated by
the pressures of “intensive mothering.”

Even when fathers were capable pro-

viders, mothers could languish under the responsibilities of domestic work,
especially if they felt isolated at home and lacked access to an independent
income. Though they sought fulﬁ llment in domesticity, they found limited
pleasure and even less security in full-time parenting. When Ken’s mother had
an obvious emotional breakdown around his sixth birthday, he concluded that
staying home left her feeling personally insecure and clinically depressed:

When she was at home raising the children, going through the nervous
breakdown, those were very hard years. My mother didn’t know what
she wanted to do with her life; she didn’t have a chance to develop her
own interests. My dad had tons to talk about, and my mom didn’t
have anything, so she wasn’t happy.

Children also worried when a stay-at-home mother lacked the personal

autonomy an independent income could provide. Connie felt her mother was
“stuck at home,” but was even more concerned about her mother’s reluctance
to take a stand against a distant, uncaring husband. As Connie watched this
helplessness grow, she began to feel a mixture of sympathy and anger:

My father was just something that sat in the corner and once in a while
got angry at us, but [my mom] was dependent. I don’t know if it was
him or just the money, but she didn’t stand up for herself as much as
I think she should. As I got older, I started realizing, “There’s all these
strong women out there, so why are you taking this?” I was very angry
at her for not being independent enough to leave.

In extreme cases, a mother’s dissatisfaction could produce neglect and

abandonment. By the time Tamika was six, years of maternal disregard left
her feeling disregarded and unloved:

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

The worst was deﬁ nitely when my mother was living here. She was
neglecting me. She’d hang out all day, all night. She never hit me, but
she’d just be mean!

For Mariela, her mother’s lack of concern took the form of unmet prom-

ises followed by increasingly frequent and lengthening disappearances:

She would dress me really nice to go out, but by the time I got to
the door, she was gone. She would storm out of the house. I would be
really disappointed.

For these children, mothers appeared to languish, and sometimes break,

under expectations they could not meet. The pressures to be a devoted care-
taker seemed to backﬁ re on their mothers, leaving their children to feel cast
off rather than cared for.

estranged and overburdened dual earners

Parental discontent is not the exclusive province of breadwinning fathers and
home-centered mothers. When parents in two-earner families could not rec-
oncile the demands of paid jobs with the needs of the household, the stresses
of work-family conﬂ ict also took a toll. Ray’s parents fought openly over his
father’s resistance to helping out, which in turn drove him further away from
the family fold:

When I was younger, they argued constantly, and when [my father]
was angry, he’d go upstairs. We knew he was our father, ’cause he was
there, but we distanced ourselves—like not having conversations and,
if he came downstairs, we would go upstairs.

Children reared in these circumstances concluded their parents were mis-

matched in basic, potentially irresolvable ways. Steve grew up in a small
Southern town, where social norms discouraged the explicit expression of
anger or conﬂ ict. Despite the veneer of civility between his mother, a high
school math teacher, and his father, an insurance salesman, he recalled his
early years in a home where marital discontent was evident:

I don’t think they were happy together. I never really knew what my
father was thinking or doing, but things were always more tense when
he came home.

Considering her parents’ separate lives, which included sleeping in differ-

ent bedrooms, Erica echoed this feeling:

t h e r i s i n g f o r t u n e s o f f l e x i b l e fa m i l i e s

I could tell they weren’t getting along. It wasn’t that they were ﬁ ght-
ing all the time, but you could feel the tension. I don’t have any mem-
ory of doing something with both of them together and really feeling
comfortable.

Dual-earner families are not immune from crises, even if they take a dif-

ferent form than those in more traditional households. Family troubles can
take many shapes, but these troubles shared a common ingredient. From
fathers who buckled under the pressures of the good provider ethic to moth-
ers who could not meet the demands of intensive mothering to dual-earner
couples caught in a web of work-family conﬂ icts and marital mismatches, an
impasse between parents left children facing surging difﬁ culties, including
parental conﬂ ict and strained marital bonds, low parental morale, economic
uncertainty, and, for some, neglect and desertion. While households varied
in the types of problems they faced, all of them strained under the weight of
increasingly unworkable expectations about who should be responsible for
providing income and who for providing care.

Becoming a More Flexible Family

These diverse family difﬁ culties framed my informants’ views on their early
childhood. For those with an improving pathway, early problems established a
baseline for assessing future turning points when homes became more secure
and supportive. Though not always obvious at the outset, paths of family change
could range from subtle transformations within marriages to obvious and often
tumultuous events like breakups or remarriages. These events could create con-
cern and fear, but the ultimate destinations made the journey seem worthwhile.

resolving marital stalemates

While few modern marriages remain sheltered from some kind of crisis,
improving family paths highlight how events inside and outside the home
can prompt parents to ﬁ nd new ways of sharing. Dissatisﬁ ed stay-at-home
mothers went to work, while employed mothers demanded and received more
support from their partners at home. Distant fathers became more involved,
while employed wives provided unhappy fathers with the economic support
they needed to improve their employment prospects. Whatever the trigger,
these changes reverberated throughout the household, setting the family on
a course to a more ﬂ exible marriage and a happier home.

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

For some traditional marriages, the key to change involved a mother’s

decision to take a job, especially if she felt discontented at home. Faced with
a spiraling loss of conﬁ dence, Ken’s mother resolved to escape her mounting
feeling of conﬁ nement by launching a business career. This more indepen-
dent life not only boosted her morale, but also helped both parents shift to a
more balanced and closer relationship:

Now that she found a job, she’s happy. She has her own friends from
work. She’s become more of an individual with her own interests.
They’re both more independent, and they have more to talk about. So
they’re both happier now. It seems like they’ve grown up. It brought
a lot more love into the family. And that makes me happy, so I have a
better attitude, too.

Josh found that his mother’s return to work—even in the modest position

of ofﬁ ce manager—gave her the courage to seek profound changes at home.
Fed up with her husband’s reliance on drugs and alcohol, which left him
surly and uninvolved, she relied on her new income, and the self-assurance it
gave her, to demand he leave and not come back unless he could be a better
partner and father:

My parents fought almost constantly. That’s all I was used to. Then
my mom got a job. They separated about eight, nine, ten months.
Even though I was upset, I thought it was for the best. That’s when
[my dad] got into some kind of program and got clean, and my mom
took him back.

While some watched their mothers become more self-conﬁ dent and

empowered by moving into the world of work, others saw a dual-earner part-
nership become more equitable. As a young girl, Dolores was concerned her
father “didn’t have one stable thing.” Not only did he move from job to job,
leaving her mother to act as the family’s economic mainstay, but he also
“liked to spend money” and “hang out with other women.” As matters wors-
ened, Dolores’s mother (much like Josh’s) confronted her father with a choice
to change or leave:

At one point, for my mother, it was, “This is it. You get it together or
get out.” They went through a change, both my father and my mother.
He got stable. They got more happy together. And he got a job as a
porter, and he’s been happy there for years.

Through a variety of routes, a dual-earner arrangement produced a

more collaborative partnership where husbands thrived along with wives.

t h e r i s i n g f o r t u n e s o f f l e x i b l e fa m i l i e s

Employed wives did more than make demands; they also enabled fathers
to seek new options if their work circumstances deteriorated. When Chris’s
father became frustrated with a dead-end, alienating job, his mother’s higher
earnings as an intensive care nurse made a critical difference. This ﬁ nancial
cushion, along with her willingness to be the primary breadwinner, allowed
his father to shift to a more satisfying career when he fell on hard times:

Between seventh and eighth grade, my dad had a business which
didn’t work and then worked as a printer for six months. It was a
dead-end thing, and he came home frustrated, so my mom got him
to go to school as an X-ray technologist. It was hard ﬁ nancially, but it
was a good time because he was actually enjoying what he was doing.
He really ﬂ ourished.

Aware that his mother’s career made his father’s mobility possible, Chris

sensed no drawbacks to living in a home where his mother brought in the
bigger paycheck:

My mother’s salary is about two times more, but it was not a big deal.
A lot of people say, “Wow, your mom is the breadwinner, and that’s
strange.” It’s not. She never says, “This is my money. I can do with it
what I want.” It’s a very joint thing.

In the best circumstances, fathers became more engaged caretakers, just as

mothers became more committed earners. Chris saw a change for the better
when his father found work he loved:

He was prone to coming home grumpy as a printer, because it’s a
monotonous job of just sitting there with the machine, but when he
started going to school, he loved coming home and talking about
working with patients. He’s still tired, but he’s not grumpy.

Despite early difﬁ culties, all these families reached turning points where

parents created more cohesive and gratifying ways of sharing. The key to this
positive change rested with the ability of parents—whether they began with
a traditional or a dual-earning arrangement—to resolve interpersonal and
ﬁ nancial crises by creating more ﬂ exible, egalitarian partnerships.

resilient single parents

Though many children watched their parents resolve marital impasses by
developing more collaborative ways of sharing paid and domestic work, a
parental breakup provided others with a second chance. Like those whose

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

parents found ways to resolve their marital impasses, a parental breakup set
a similar process in motion for these children. Amid the undeniable losses,
these separations created the time and space for a custodial parent to resolve
domestic standoffs. When single mothers became successful breadwinners and
single fathers became involved caretakers, they provided children with greater
emotional and, in some cases, ﬁ nancial support than would have been possible
if their parents had stayed together. These single parents, like their married
counterparts, responded to unexpected crises by transgressing gender bound-
aries in search of more ﬂ exible ways to support and care for their children.

Work-Committed Single Mothers

Conventional wisdom sees becoming a single mother as the beginning of an
inexorable downward slide for their children, yet many of my informants dis-
agreed. For them, family life became more—not less—secure when a mother
strengthened her ties to paid work and separated from a partner who pro-
vided neither money nor love. Some of these mothers took jobs that enabled
them to leave a marriage mired in conﬂ ict and ﬁ nancial uncertainty. Others
joined the workplace and became capable breadwinners after a spouse aban-
doned the household and left them to fend for themselves. Despite the odds,
these changes ultimately brought children more security and support.

Miranda’s father refused to let her mother take a job, even though a series

of ill-conceived business efforts left him unable to support anyone. After
years of economic uncertainty, her mother ended this standoff—and her own
extended hiatus from work—when she took a sales job in a clothing store.
Miranda rejoiced, even though she knew her father disapproved:

We were getting to the edge and didn’t see where the next dollar
was coming from. So one day we went to the mall, and [my mom]
was hired in two minutes when they saw the experience she had. I was
so excited about her going back to work, but my dad wasn’t happy.
I think it was a blow to his pride—like we can’t trust you anymore.
I remember him telling me, “I’m sure you’re glad that she’s back at
work.” He was deﬁ nitely not glad, and he knew I trusted her more
than him.

When Connie’s mother took a job after years of depending on a husband

who routinely came home hostile and inebriated, her deﬁ ance of his wishes
and newfound independence transformed the marriage. Despite her father’s
opposition, this decision relieved the family’s ﬁ nancial strains, enabled her
mother to stand up to a distant, controlling husband, and gave Connie a
renewed optimism:

t h e r i s i n g f o r t u n e s o f f l e x i b l e fa m i l i e s

The biggest change was when my mother went back to work when
I was about ten. She started part-time but eventually went full-time.
We were always ﬁ nancially in trouble, so that tension eased, and that’s
also around the time she stopped buying him beer and making sepa-
rate dinners for him. I think the job led to independence, because she
felt worth something again, by herself, away from her family. Once
she got that sense of independence, the tension between my mother
and father got worse, but the results weren’t bad. I wish she had done
it sooner.

When the marriage seemed oppressive, a mother’s growing ﬁ nancial inde-

pendence led children to accept—and even hope for—more fundamental
changes. As Connie’s father’s angry outbursts and domineering style con-
tinued unabated, she felt relieved to see her mother gaining the strength to
protect herself and her children:

The tension with my dad never eased, and my mom had gotten so sick,
we took her to the emergency room with multiple bleeding ulcers.
That was her real turning point. It was building inside of her to leave,
’cause she’d got herself a job and started to realize she had her own
money. So once she saw that, what was she was waiting for?

Observing a similar situation, Anita also celebrated her mother’s decision

to leave:

[My dad] was the manager of this bar, but his drinking and lack of
responsibility got in the way, and we fell on hard times. They sepa-
rated when I was seven for six months and then we moved back for
another year. But that was it. She just knew that this wasn’t going to
work, and from what she tells me, he didn’t really ﬁ ght her when she
ﬁ nally decided to leave. He was probably relieved because the respon-
sibility wasn’t as immediate anymore.

In all of these cases, children interpreted their single mother’s growing

work commitment as a clear indication of their caring, not their neglect.
Even when the job seemed modest, it could make a crucial difference. Saman-
tha’s mother was able to pull the family out of poverty by putting herself
through school and getting a job:

My mom went on public assistance, but she got her GED when I was
about four or ﬁ ve, and she was working by the time I was seven. It was
clerical work, but we had better clothes and better food. A lot of things
changed. I got to go to the circus and stuff like that. I remember her

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

telling me she wanted to be able to give me something better after
everything we had been through. She always said she lived her life for
me. Always.

The beneﬁ ts were even greater when, often against substantial odds, a sin-

gle mother broke out of a female labor ghetto of low-wage work and moved
ahead. Far from sapping attention from their children, such accomplishments
enhanced a single mother’s ability to care for and inspire her children. Recall
the case of Isabella, who took pride in her mother’s unexpected accomplish-
ments and felt no loss of love or attention:

I don’t know what position she started as, but she was promoted and now
she’s an executive treasurer at the bank. I’m so proud of my mother.

And these reactions are not conﬁ ned to women. Considering his mother’s

move from “a classic housewife” to a “practicing architect and loving it,”
Todd felt the same way:

What she’s achieved, where she’s gotten in fourteen years is amazing.
And she is very caring and always there. So I hope she feels successful.
Because it’s really good for her to be feeling her self-worth.

Whether single mothers achieved unexpected heights or simply man-

aged to summon the strength and determination to do it all, facing—and
overcoming—these daunting challenges inspired their children and provided
lessons for their own lives. Paul perceived personal beneﬁ ts from watching
his mother learn to stand up for herself:

She’s a lot more self-assured now that she’s on her own and not hav-
ing to rely on somebody. She’s doing well, which is good for her self-
conﬁ dence and good for me.

And so did Steve, who also watched his mother’s self-conﬁ dence grow

when she separated from his unfaithful father:

Getting away from my father really helped my mother. If my parents
had stayed married, she might not have continued working. This way,
she was able to do things and began to be able to talk to him and say,
“This is ridiculous.” She stood up to him.

This process reverberated in unexpected directions. Rather than losing

attention, children often gained a more responsible, involved caretaker. After
Connie’s mother discovered pleasure and self-esteem in her newfound auton-
omy, her rising morale nourished Connie as well:

t h e r i s i n g f o r t u n e s o f f l e x i b l e fa m i l i e s

My mother became a much happier person. And because she was bet-
ter, I was better. I had a weight taken off of me. I think we all would
have been better off if she left sooner, but the fact she’s done it at all is
something. I’m very proud of her. She’s come a real long way.

Whether these mothers launched promising careers or secured more mod-

est but still steady work, their persistence and dedication provided inspiration
for both daughters and sons. Even though Anita’s mother never graduated
from college or rose higher than an administrative assistant at a local college,
her efforts to combine work with raising her children offered Anita a blue-
print for how she too could navigate life’s obstacles:

To have supported a family, raised her children, gotten a college degree
all by herself—I think she’s amazing. She doesn’t want to be a model
because she feels she’s underachieving, but she’s a model because she
did this all by herself. I have an incredible amount of respect. She’s
proud of the way we turned out, and I hope she’s proud of having done
what she did.

Shauna drew the same lesson from her mother’s work commitment, even

though a string of secretarial jobs did not seem to do justice to her mother’s
talents:

My mom’s just such a smart woman, and she went to night school to
get her Associate’s college degree. Even though she never verbalized
it, I knew she wanted more for herself. I sometimes wonder what she
would have accomplished if she didn’t have me at such an early age,
but she didn’t shun her responsibility.

All of these children saw their mothers’ efforts as the strongest kind of

love, which opened doors for them that would have remained closed. Antonio
appreciated how his mother’s banking career placed a good education within
his reach and gave him a vision of a better future:

My mom’s ﬁ rst priority was family, but you couldn’t take care of the
family if you wasn’t working. She seen that we were poor, and she
wanted to be mother and father, and she has [been]. She even paid for
private school. I read somewhere about upward social mobility. That’s
exactly how I explain it. She branched off to do this, and now she’s
teaching me.

Whether these single mothers found a job that helped them escape an

unworkable marriage or they adjusted to a partner’s desertion by building a

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

career of their own, they all enlarged their children’s support by enlarging the
boundaries of their own lives. In these cases, a mother’s pursuit of personal
autonomy did not conﬂ ict with her “selﬂ ess” dedication to the family. To the
contrary, as Miranda noted, these equally worthy goals seemed inseparable:

My mother has always been very selﬂ ess and fully responsible for me
ﬁ nancially. She has completely and entirely dedicated herself to me in
the true sense.

Involved Single Fathers

While parental breakups mostly produce custodial single mothers, an increas-
ing share of parents are single fathers. The percentage of single-parent homes
headed by a father, while still low, is one of the “fastest growing demographic
groups.”

It may not be typical for a mother to leave, but when this happens,

it can prompt a father to become more involved and, in the process, create a
more stable home. Indeed, when mothers are not present, single and custo-
dial fathers, as well as gay couples, routinely nurture and care for their chil-
dren in all the ways we associate with mothering.

Mariela and Tamika felt

hurt and abandoned when their mothers moved out, but they did not wish
for a different outcome. Since their mothers’ frustration and anger pervaded
their early childhood, tensions eased and home life improved in myriad ways
after they left. Mariela compared the incessant hostility prior to her mother’s
departure to the calm, affectionate atmosphere following it:

My father was like, “This can’t keep on; the kids can’t be in this envi-
ronment. If you want, you can stay with them.” But she didn’t want
to, so he stayed with us. It made things a lot better. If they [had]
stayed together, it would have been the biggest dysfunctional family
because she was looking for an argument all the time.

For Tamika, a similar sense of relief eventually followed the initial shock

and pain:

One day I came home, and my mom wrote with lipstick on a mirror
that she was leaving. I could read the whole thing. I was miserable at
the way she left, but I was happy that she did leave. It was calmer. My
dad wasn’t stressed, had nobody nagging at him. The way that she did
it was bad, but it’s better that she left.

When Erica’s parents divorced, she felt estranged from her mother,

even though she was readily available. Resisting the pressure to make the
“socially appropriate” choice, Erica took the opportunity to live with her

t h e r i s i n g f o r t u n e s o f f l e x i b l e fa m i l i e s

father, who made her feel more cherished even though he had not been her
primary caretaker:

Initially they had decided that it was best that my sister and I stay
with my mother, but I wanted to live with my father. I wanted to sur-
round myself with people I felt comfortable with and that I felt really
cared about me. What was important was getting the attention that
I needed, not the right clothes or whatever.

Fathers who became involved, attentive caretakers provided a key to sur-

viving—and thriving—when children became disaffected from their moth-
ers. Erica’s decision to live with her father sparked a “turning point” that led
him to reassess his priorities, reduce his preoccupation with work, and focus
on being both “mother” and “father” for his two growing daughters:

The divorce was really a turning point. Before, [my father] had been
traveling so much that we were not that close. After, he became much
more involved. There were a lot of bigger issues going on than work.
The responsibility was truly on his shoulders. So it made my father
closer. He played both roles, if there is such a thing as a role.

A mother’s departure, however difﬁ cult, could have a silver lining by open-

ing the space and providing the spark for fathers to develop parenting skills
and share activities they never imagined they could or would enjoy. Tamika’s
father became a careful, concerned parent who learned the intricacies of cook-
ing, cleaning, and hair braiding after her mother left the household:

Me and my father were closer. We used to go everywhere. He learned
how to do all the things he had to do, like making dinner and getting
my hair done. He paid my tuition by himself. My dad was more of a
mother than my mom, so I feel lucky.

As custodial fathers eased the impact of other losses, all of these children

renewed their optimism about the possibility of creating spiritually closer
family ties. In the aftermath of a breakup, these once divided families became
happier and more cohesive, even—as Erica explained—if others viewed their
homes as less than “ideal”:

Living with my dad, my sister, and me, we really established a strong
relationship for having gone through this. It didn’t matter that there
wasn’t a mother ﬁ gure. It felt better, stronger. So this was my idea of
what a family should be—that they can really talk to each other, get
along under any circumstances, no matter how small the apartment.

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

Mariela agreed:

It was hard, because my father would struggle. But I had a lot of fun.
I felt loved. My father did everything, and me and my brothers got
really close. We all got closer.

Still Parents, If Not Partners

Parental breakups, like parental efforts to transform their marriages, have
continuing, but unknown consequences. In the short run, they usually evoke
fear and resistance. A happy ending is never guaranteed. But a breakup does
not always initiate or continue a downward drift. Some breakups bring more
than just a sense of relief.

They also create contexts where children can expe-

rience tangible gains. In these instances, children believe one or both parents
acted courageously to give them a better life.

Those who view a parental breakup as a change for the better also experi-

enced a shift to more expansive forms of caretaking and breadwinning. Moth-
ers became more work-centered and self-sufﬁ cient, while fathers became more
dedicated and family-centered. By embracing more ﬂ exible parenting strate-
gies, these single parents provided relief from marital impasses and intractable
domestic conﬂ ict. Without discounting the unavoidable difﬁ culties and losses
a separation brings, these children also perceive signiﬁ cant gains. Far from
believing parents should always stay together for the sake of the children, they
think it was better to face the inevitable than to postpone or deny it. Aware
that, in Miranda’s words, “it was just the lesser of two evils,” they feel fortu-
nate to have not endured the greater one. Despite the undeniable pain of her
mother’s departure, in Tamika’s eyes, it spared her far worse consequences:

I think they would have broken up eventually anyway. I probably
would have hated my mother even more. ’Cause then I would have
had to live with her. I was better off without my mother being here,
being more miserable.

And Isabella reached the same conclusion about her father:

It wouldn’t have worked, and [my father’s] existence has proven
that. He’s really irresponsible. He can’t handle having a job; he can’t
handle having a wife and children; he can’t handle anything. So my
mom wouldn’t have been happy at all with someone like that. And
I wouldn’t have either.

Since parental breakups only occur when one or both partners are no lon-

ger prepared to work through their difﬁ culties, we tend to equate separation

t h e r i s i n g f o r t u n e s o f f l e x i b l e fa m i l i e s

with conﬂ ict and recrimination. Yet, by changing this context, separation
can also provide an opportunity for parents to face and resolve their con-
ﬂ icts in a more collaborative way. Some separations initiated such beneﬁ cial
changes. Relieved to know her parents were happier apart than they had been
together, Danisha felt lucky to remain close to both:

My parents really tried to make me feel comfortable. It wasn’t an easy
thing but it wasn’t screaming and crying, either. Sometimes you know
that your personalities just won’t make a compatible union anymore.
Some people are better off being friends, so their relationship got bet-
ter. And I saw my dad so often, he didn’t disappoint me.

These new partnerships helped parents become more engaged caretakers. Shar-

ing custody seemed to spark more involvement from both of Todd’s parents:

It improved it quite a lot with both of them. [There was] more attention
from both sides because now both parents are ﬁ ghting for our attention.

When a breakup eased conﬂ ict and sparked sharing, children felt closer

to both parents than they had when everyone lived together warily under the
same roof. These children noticed—and appreciated—the irony that physical
separation had allowed more emotional closeness.

Grateful her parents had

relieved her of the responsibility to “save” their marriage, Erica was able to
focus on the bonds she had with each:

Their emphasis was on us, so we wouldn’t feel like it was our fault.
And it shouldn’t change individually how we feel about each other. I
really got to know my father, and my mother as well. It did not affect
my school; it did not affect my grades. It made us all closer.

By undermining the strict division between women’s “mothering” and

men’s “fathering,” beneﬁ cial breakups created both the need and the oppor-
tunity to transgress gender boundaries.

When single parents were able to

take on responsibilities they once deemed out of bounds, they were in a better
position to meet their children’s needs. In the best of circumstances, sepa-
rated parents also developed a respectful postmarriage relationship that fos-
tered a sharing of work and care.

remarriages, new and improved

Parental separations can do more than provide relief from domestic con-
ﬂ ict and malaise. They also create an opportunity for custodial parents to
forge new, more satisfying partnerships. In fact, more than 40 percent of all

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

marriages are remarriages, and about one-third of remarriages involve chil-
dren. About 17 percent of U.S. children live in stepfamilies (and in such
families, stepfathers outnumber stepmothers ﬁ ve to one). When a remarriage
brings a nurturing, committed caretaker, a stepparent can feel, as Mariela
declared, like a “new parent.” Several years after Mariela’s mother left, her
father’s new marriage gave her a sense that having a family could mean shar-
ing rather than ﬁ ghting:

After about a year and a half, Sonia and my dad got married. Things
were a lot better than when I was with my mother. This was so differ-
ent. This is like, what’s hers is everybody’s, what’s his is everybody’s.
Instant family! I was so lucky to have her. She is my mom.

Remarriages do not guarantee domestic improvements, and many do not

create them. The quality of remarriages and blended families, like the qual-
ity of ﬁ rst marriages, varies greatly.

Yet despite the common concern that

most stepparents are not good parents, studies show that in about 25 percent
of cases where an adolescent lives with a stepfather, children have a close
relationship with both their stepfather and their father, while another 35
percent have a closer relationship with their stepfather.

Shauna exempliﬁ es

this process. Born to a single mother, she experienced a dramatic change at
ﬁ ve, when her mother married. Although she worried that her new stepfa-
ther would drain away her mother’s time and attention, his evident warmth
and excitement melted her skepticism. When her mother explained that he
wanted to be her “real father,” she realized she was not losing a mother but
gaining another committed caretaker:

At ﬁ rst, I was feeling it was a bad change because I wanted my mom
to myself. Then my mom said, “Why don’t you call him daddy?” The
next thing I was just saying “Daddy!” He picked me up, and I remem-
ber the look on his face and his laughing and saying “She called me
daddy!” I was so happy, like it’s good now. After that, he’s always been
my dad, and there’s never been any question about it.

These new partnerships appeared to work because they were collaborative,

ﬂ exible, and egalitarian. Shauna believed her parents’ commitment to shar-
ing the load at home and work was the key to their success:

Money was always an issue, but making sure that the family was taken
care of was their number one priority. The way my dad did that was
to work and be home, and the same thing for my mother. Both of
them did everything. My dad would get home before my mom, so

t h e r i s i n g f o r t u n e s o f f l e x i b l e fa m i l i e s

he would cook the dinner and clean. My dad spoiled me for any other
man because this is the model I had.

Mariela agreed:

They take turns, and they share. She works and does everything, and
so does he. We’re all grateful. Of course, they have a little problem
here and there, but they seem so happy compared with my mother.

By adding a new parent who contributed emotional, practical, and ﬁ nan-

cial support that had once seemed elusive, a successful remarriage—whether
it brought a new father or mother—marked a turn for the better.

Stepparents as Earners and Nurturers

Stepmothers and stepfathers could become both trusted caretakers and cru-
cial ﬁ nancial contributors. Tamika’s new “mother,” who worked as a supervi-
sor at the post ofﬁ ce, provided both parental guidance and much appreciated
economic resources:

My little sister and I have a stepmother who’s better than my own
mother. My ﬁ rst boyfriend, my ﬁ rst whatever—we talk about every-
thing. And ﬁ nancially, it made a big difference. I went to a private
school, and we’re about to move into our house, and that’s ’cause of
my stepmother.

After watching his single mother struggle, Phil rejoiced about ﬁ nally

having a father to conﬁ de in and to share his mother’s ﬁ nancial load:

When Charles came into the picture, it was like a godsend. My dad
never paid child support, so he became a breadwinner. And when I had
a problem, I could go to him. Charles was more of a father than my
father ever was.

When remarriages brought stepparents who, as Mariela said, did

“everything,” these newly constructed families also provided children with
reassuring images of family life. In contrast to the parental stalemates
preceding them, these new partnerships offered lessons in how to build a
satisfying relationship. When Erica’s father brought home his soon-to-be
new wife, she found it gratifying to ﬁ nally see him giving and receiving
affection:

With her there, I got to see my father really happy. It was a big chance
for me. Finally, he’s smiling! He was holding her hand, and that was
just unheard of with my mom.

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

Collaborative remarriages also offered children new models about how to

love and work. Donna drew life lessons by watching her stepfather persevere
at work:

My stepfather worked two jobs and never complained about it. When
he wanted something, he did it. That’s how I am—very determined.
He taught [me] not to give up. You do what you gotta do, and you’ll
survive. He is a hero to me.

After watching her mother’s mistreatment by men, Samantha gained

renewed hope about the prospects of ﬁ nding a worthy partner by observing
her stepfather’s kindness:

He’s very loving to my mom. I learned a lot from him about how men
are supposed to be with a woman and with his children.

Even though gaining a “new” parent was not always a smooth process, in

these cases, it ultimately enlarged a child’s emotional and practical support,
expanded their notion of kinship, and provided a more uplifting vision of
what a family could be.

These remarriages show how the “case for mar-

riage,” to use Maggie Gallagher’s and Linda Waite’s phrase, really depends
on which marriage. Like families, we need to look beyond the fact of a remar-
riage to its quality. For children who beneﬁ ted from remarriages, the breakup
of an unhappy, destructive relationship provided an opportunity for parents
to create a new, more cooperative and cohesive one.

it takes a village

While some argue it takes a marriage—and only a marriage—to raise a child,
many children are certain it helped to have a village as well.

Support from

real and ﬁ ctive kin expanded their material and emotional resources. In the
short run, care networks provided a safety net amid rough times. In the lon-
ger run, they offered sustained contributions of time and money. At moments
of crises in the relationships or economic fortunes of parents, these additional
breadwinners and caretakers became not only critical, but visible.

Additional Earners and Caretakers

Though American culture extols the self-sufﬁ cient nuclear family, children
often relied on both ﬁ nancial and caretaking contributions from extended
kin and friends. Like remarriages that brought earning and nurturing step-
parents, these extended networks enlarged a child’s practical and emotional
support, especially when parents could not make ends meet on their own.

t h e r i s i n g f o r t u n e s o f f l e x i b l e fa m i l i e s

Relying on others could mean the difference between falling into poverty and
retaining a comfortable standard of living.

When Ray’s father was laid off,

his grandparents bolstered his mother’s modest earnings, kept the household
aﬂ oat, and allowed his brother and him to remain in parochial school:

We knew there was something wrong ’cause I remember being taken
out of class, but that was only for a couple of hours. With the grand-
parents, when you have one deﬁ ciency, somebody always stepped in
and provided for the other.

Extended kin were especially important when single-parent homes expe-

rienced economic crises.

When they stepped in, a crisis could even become

an opportunity. Like the 8 percent of U.S. children who live in a household
containing a grandparent, Antonio relied on his co-residing grandparents
as much as his single mother.

In his eyes, they were a team who worked

together to make certain he got what he needed:

My mom and grandparents were the type of people that even if we
didn’t have money, we was gonna get it. Their ideal is, “I want to give
you all the things that I couldn’t have when I was young.” My grand-
parents and my mother thought like that, so no matter how much in
poverty we were living, I was getting everything I wanted. They’ve
raised me right, so I can’t be a screw-up.

Children also relied on the caretaking of extended kin. For some, relatives

ﬁ lled the gap when parents went to work. Although Dolores lived with both
parents, her grandparents were equally involved:

My mom was there for us when she got home, and [being with] my
grandmother was just like time with my mom. Whatever my mom
didn’t give me, she was gonna give me, and I knew that (laugh).

Still others counted on a wider group. When Anita returned to the old

neighborhood after her mother separated from her father, she gained a close-
knit web of relatives:

We moved four blocks away from my grandparents and my aunt, and
they were all very involved. My grandmother passed away not too long
after, but my grandfather was always there, and we were a very tight
unit. The six of us were all very connected.

Children from middle-class homes also relied on other caretakers, although

they were more likely to be paid workers.

When these arrangements fos-

tered close, reciprocal relationships, they were as important as the support

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

of kin.

Even before Todd’s parents broke up, he cherished his babysitter’s

presence:

We were really lucky to have Margie, someone who took care of us and
instilled good morals. She deﬁ nitely was a member of the family. And
the good thing about it is that in the last several years, when Margie
couldn’t really work, my mom took care of her.

Whether children relied on grandparents, other relatives, or ﬁ ctive kin

and paid caretakers, these ﬁ nancial and care networks helped parents meet
their own obligations, provided added support for children, and softened the
impact of unforeseen crises.

Standing in for Parents

By providing sustained emotional and material sustenance, a child’s care net-
work could augment and even stand in for parents. Daily support from his
grandparents made them seem like “real parents” to Steve long before his
mother and father parted:

Even before my parents broke up, I spent every weekend with my
mother’s parents, and every day, we would go over to my grandparents’
house after school. They would drive me to school every morning, and
my grandfather would sometimes bring my lunch to school. In a lot of
ways, they were more like parents.

Nonparental caretakers made a crucial difference during temporary crises

and longer periods alike. Ray’s track coach took over and got him through
when his father became lost in a haze of beer and wine:

During that time my father was drinking, my track coach took us out
and kept us busy. He was kind of a father ﬁ gure. He was only seven
years older, but he really helped when I needed something impor-
tant. So in my life, when someone dropped out, somebody else always
stepped in.

When Isabella’s father stopped visiting her after years of becoming increas-

ingly distant, she looked to her grandfather, on whom she had already come
to count on for love and attention:

It’s not like I didn’t have a father, because my grandfather was always
there. He was always there to take me to my after-school clubs and
pick me up and then take me wherever I needed to go. I was still
sheltered—he had to take me to the library, wait till I ﬁ nished all my

t h e r i s i n g f o r t u n e s o f f l e x i b l e fa m i l i e s

work, take me home. I call him dad. Nobody could do better. I never
missed out on having a father.

Stan, too, was ﬁ lled with appreciation for his grandparents, who provided

more unconditional love and support than either his father, who never gave
him much attention, or his mother, who was always around but seemed less
concerned about his happiness than her own:

They were just always so good. When I would go on a trip, my mother
was like, “I want you to bring me this, this, this,” but my grandpar-
ents would say “Just enjoy yourself!” They wanted me to be happy and
live for myself.

The support of these parental ﬁ gures helped children cope with the short-

term crises and prolonged difﬁ culties besetting their households. Rather than
feeling deprived of a “normal” home, they felt fortunate to receive care and atten-
tion from people who loved them genuinely and generously. Since contempo-
rary nuclear families increasingly experience unpredictable (and unavoidable)
economic and caretaking squeezes, they are not—and cannot be—self-sufﬁ cient
entities. When all goes well for families, the wider supports on which they
depend may be invisible; but when families encounter economic, practical, and
interpersonal difﬁ culties, the crucial contributions from those who dwell just
outside this small circle become more apparent. The children who experienced
improving family pathways treasured the help given by real and ﬁ ctive extended
kin. It made little difference if care came from grandparents, other relatives, or
paid helpers. What mattered is that these “villages” cushioned the blows of unex-
pected change, provided children with a sense of stability in uncertain times, and
helped families overcome the crises parents could not resolve on their own.

gender ﬂ

exibility and family support

Families with rising fortunes were able to overcome domestic difﬁ culties by
transgressing gender boundaries and developing more ﬂ exible strategies for
supporting and caring for children. Some children watched their parents cre-
ate a more collaborative marriage when a mother went to work and a father
became more involved in child rearing. Others saw a single mother get on
her feet economically or a single father take on caretaking duties in the wake
of a parental breakup. Some also gained more plentiful ﬁ nancial and psycho-
logical support when a custodial parent remarried. Finally, many children
enjoyed expanded support when others joined in the caretaking and bread-
winning work of family life.

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

All these strategies helped families create more economically secure and

emotionally cohesive homes. They nourished parental morale, increased a
home’s ﬁ nancial security, and provided inspiring models of adult resilience.
While children acknowledged the difﬁ culties accompanying tumultu-
ous family changes, they valued the opportunity these changes provided to
develop more ﬂ exible and effective family strategies.

All’s Well That Ends Well

When families moved from difﬁ cult beginnings to reasonably happy, if
not perfect, endings, children concluded “all’s well that end’s well.” Look-
ing back, Eric is convinced his parents’ separation ultimately led to a better
destination:

Some might argue, but I’m pretty happy with the way things turned
out. I’m a ﬁ rm believer it doesn’t matter how the road is. We’ve gotten
there, and we have good relationships, and everyone is decently happy.
I truly believe they did the best they could, and I have no one to blame
for my own mistakes.

Samantha reached the same conclusion about her single mother’s journey

toward a successful career and happy marriage:

[My mom] was able to come from so low and bring herself up high.
Even though we went through everything, she was able to pick herself
up, move on, and just make sure I had everything that I needed. We
had our thick and thin moments, but we managed to get through ’em,
and now it’s just great. I guess you could say we triumphed.

Yet childhoods that took a turn for the better are, by deﬁ nition, marked

by periods of substantial difﬁ culty. As children weigh their improving for-
tunes against the struggles they endured, the journey to a better destination
offered valued lessons along the way.

the road not taken

Improving family paths leave children to ponder how stressful experiences
can nevertheless lead to a far better destination than “what might have been.”
Without denying the losses, Miranda harbored no doubts about her fam-
ily’s transformation from a debt-ridden two-parent home to a more stable
existence with her single mother. As she explained, when the ideal is not

t h e r i s i n g f o r t u n e s o f f l e x i b l e fa m i l i e s

an option, people must search for the most responsible choice among the
remaining alternatives:

In the end, though I would have liked for things to work for my dad,
of all the options that were out there, this is deﬁ nitely the best way it
could have worked out. The things that we can do now, the freedom
and independence we enjoyed—it’s such a contrast to that time when
the future looked so unpredictable. You have that weight off your
shoulders, so this is that much sweeter.

Mariela agreed. Rather than dwelling on her mother’s absence, she was

grateful that her father and stepmother were there to protect her from what
could have been a far worse fate:

Considering the way it turned out, I’m happy. It could have been a lot
worse. I saw how a lot of the girls I went to school with ended up preg-
nant or with guys who hurt them. They probably didn’t have parents
like mine. They probably had parents like my [biological] mother.
And it just made me feel so good because I didn’t end up like that.

Even though Josh’s parents managed to create a more loving partnership,

he also believed it would have been far worse to live amid “constant ﬁ ghting”
than to see them part:

It always seemed like a war on each other. So if things hadn’t gotten
better, I would have wanted them to be divorced. Even though I knew
initially it would have been painful, it would have been best. Divorce
deﬁ nitely is better than some marriages, [where] two people living
together can be detrimental to the children. My parents didn’t stay
together for the kids. They stayed together for themselves.

Surveying the sweep of childhood, all these young women and men took

pride in knowing their families found ways to overcome, however tumultu-
ous the trip. This knowledge softened the memories of hard times and left
them feeling fortunate.

hidden lessons

Rising family fortunes also offered hidden beneﬁ ts. The experience of pre-
vailing over difﬁ culty, these children reasoned, offered lessons not available
when families traveled smoother paths. Looking back on his parents’ efforts
to weave an egalitarian balance at home and at work, Chris was inspired by
their ability to tackle conﬂ icts he knew he would face:

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

It made me realize that there’s a certain dynamic between work and
a family and it can be done. It’s not an impossible thing. And to hear
things like, “Both parents working isn’t going to be successful, the
kids are gonna get shortchanged or something,” I really can’t see that.
If there’s love, and that love is apparent, it’s just something that can be
felt. It’s not about the time, the gifts, things like that. Love can only
come through a certain way.

Keisha was inspired by watching her mother journey from single moth-

erhood and public assistance to a good job and a committed marriage. Her
mother’s early “mistakes” provided a cautionary tale about what to avoid in
her own life, while her mother’s determination to prevail gave Keisha hope
that she could also overcome life’s unforeseen difﬁ culties as well:

My mom’s independence and her pushing, her succeeding has
pushed me to want to achieve my goals. She’s my hero. Looking
at it now, I know I don’t have to make the same mistakes because
I’ve seen it with my own eyes, I’ve lived it, I know what it’s like.
Knowing that no matter how low you are, you can bring yourself
up. And you can say that you’ve been through it, so it’s not just an
abstract thing.

In addition to providing lessons about how to cope with a rapidly chang-

ing age, these “happy endings” make the struggles seem worthwhile. Josh
believed his family’s path helped him become stronger, more grateful, and
better prepared to face adulthood:

I wouldn’t change it. Just to undergo such things at a younger age,
I think I’m more appreciative, more aware of things, more emotionally
tougher. I deﬁ nitely appreciate the life I have now ’cause I knew how
it was to not have those things.

a matter of luck?

As children compared their improving circumstances with others less for-
tunate, “luck” appeared to play a large role. Despite his family’s struggles,
Paul felt “lucky” to receive so much support and avoid the troubles befalling
others:

I really had a sort of tragedy-free childhood, so it’s interesting to meet
people who had horrible stuff happen to them. It just taught me how
lucky I was. If the worst thing that happened was my parents’ divorce,

t h e r i s i n g f o r t u n e s o f f l e x i b l e fa m i l i e s

that wasn’t even that bad, so it really kind of made me appreciate
things a lot more.

Todd concurred:

I was just so lucky in so many ways. I’ve had so many great people
around me, so I think I have less faults. And I think it’s because they
were all so wonderful in so many different ways. My cheering crowd
is big.

Whether they beneﬁ ted from a transformed marriage, a resilient single

parent, a more collaborative remarriage, or an expanded care network, most
felt luck had spared them from a bleaker fate. Yet rising family fortunes did
not depend on luck, but rather on how new social conditions allowed parents
and other caretakers to reorganize their households in more ﬂ exible ways.
By blurring the boundaries between breadwinning and caretaking, mothers
could seek an economic base at work, fathers could become more involved in
caring for their children, and partners could establish more independent lives
and more sharing, equitable relationships.

The option to reconsider the terms of a deteriorating marriage gave some

parents an exit strategy and others the courage to ask for and receive needed
changes. The option for women to seek committed work outside the home
allowed mothers to provide a more secure economic base and allowed fathers
to pursue new work options when earlier ones dead-ended. The option to cre-
ate new marriages, with more respectful and sharing partnerships, allowed
children to gain more stable and cohesive reconstructed families. The option
to rely on a wider network of real and ﬁ ctive kin allowed vulnerable children
and overburdened parents to call on a safety net in good times and in times
of sustained stress. In all these ways, new options for women and men to
organize earning and caring gave families second and even third chances to
develop new, more ﬂ exible ways of meeting their needs.

New opportunities to cross gender boundaries and develop more ﬂ exible

patterns of breadwinning and caretaking help families meet the inevitable
but unpredictable challenges of contemporary life. Yet improving family
paths are always hard-won, and these reasonably happy endings are never
guaranteed. Families often lack the social and personal resources to develop
ﬂ exible responses, and many homes are ill equipped to acknowledge, much
less overcome, the obstacles they face.

c h a p t e r f o u r

Domestic Deadlocks and
Declining Fortunes

hough many experienced improving family fortunes, even more
saw their family fortunes decline. Most of my interviewees—about

68 percent—recalled an early family life full of promise, but for about half
of this group, childhood sooner or later took a signiﬁ cant turn for the worse.
Across the full range of family forms and domestic circumstances, including
once seemingly idyllic homes, these families faced challenges that cascaded
into domestic deadlocks and declining fortunes. Some changes in family for-
tunes were subtle and difﬁ cult for a child to discern, while others were impos-
sible to ignore. Isaiah could easily contrast his “ﬁ rst” home, where he lived
comfortably with both parents in a growing African-American suburb, to his
“second” home, where he lived on the edge of poverty with a single mother:

The ﬁ rst, you could say, was ideal. It was a good arrangement. And the
second wasn’t. So I was pretty angry. [My father] continued to make
the effort, but I didn’t want to deal with him [because] he’s the one
who decided to leave. My trust was betrayed.

For others, stability itself slowly but inexorably became a problem. Grow-

ing up in a traditional home, Rosa only gradually realized her family had
fractured despite its outward appearance. From the vantage of her early twen-
ties, Rosa clearly saw the growing distance among the once close-knit mem-
bers of her large Latino household:

I would say, when I was eight or nine, it was an ideal family. Now, it’s
not even close to ideal. We’re not close. We don’t communicate with

d o m e s t i c d e a d l o c k s a n d d e c l i n i n g f o r t u n e s

each other. We have no trust with each other anymore. We argue. We
didn’t realize it, but we’re all broken up.

Whether family change involved dramatic events, such as a mari-

tal breakup or job loss, or more gradual troubles brought on by parental
estrangement and disappointment, the pace of change mattered less than the
losses it entailed. As Isaiah put it, “it’s probably harder to have the ideal and
lose it than never to have it at all.”

Why did these young women and men conclude that their family life

took a turn for the worse? How did their situations differ from those who
received stable or growing support? Families from both groups faced
similar challenges, from parental separations to stressed two-parent
homes. All families face hardship sooner or later, and a mother’s decision
to take a job, a father’s growing involvement at home, and even a paren-
tal breakup can trigger beneficial adjustments. But when families were
unable to adapt to such unforeseen difficulties as divorce, employment
insecurity, or parental malaise by crafting new, more flexible strategies
for earning and caring, their fortunes declined and their children’s sup-
port eroded.

Off to a Good Start

Children need both economic security and attentive, reliable caretakers, but
they can receive these supports in a range of ways. Among the slightly more
than two-thirds who started off with stable and secure early family experi-
ences, more than half were born into a traditional family with clear gender
divisions between breadwinning and caretaking, while about a third had
dual-earning parents, and the rest lived with single parents.

Barbara, Hank, and Rosa have different ethnic and class backgrounds, but

all had early homes anchored by parents who seemed happy in their separate
spheres. Barbara was raised by white, working-class parents in the country,
where:

The stability lasted up until I was eight. We were a very pictur-
esque family. Nice house, and we lived in the country, and it was just
picture-perfect. And everyone got along in their roles, the way they
were supposed to.

Hank lived with his parents and sister in a newly forming predominantly

white, middle-class suburban tract:

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

It was the suburban house with the yard. We moved in there when
I was three. It was great for a kid—trees and the whole Ozzie and
Harriet routine. We didn’t need malls. Not at that age.

And Rosa lived in a modest apartment with her parents and siblings in an

inner-city Latino neighborhood:

Me and my sisters and father and mother, we used to have great fun.
We used to spend lots of time together and go out all the time as a
whole family.

All three lived in stable, warm, and very traditional homes, but less tra-

ditional families could prompt similar reactions. Children in dual-earner
homes, where parents blurred the gender boundaries between working and
parenting, also shared a sense of promising beginnings. Growing up in an
upper-middle-class suburb, William relished the idea of living in a home
where his mother, a bank vice president, and his father, an engineer, shared
the work of earning a living and caring for the children:

If anything, my dad did more than my mom. He always did the cook-
ing. They sort of split the cleaning, and there were four of us kids, so
they managed to get us to do a little bit of work. It seemed great! I was
very conscious of women’s lib and stuff like that, so I thought it was
great that I lived in this backwards family.

Recalling her mother’s job as an ofﬁ ce manager for the Board of Education

and her father’s work on the night shift as a bus driver, Jasmine valued her par-
ents’ commitment to sharing domestic duties and providing economic security
by combining the resources from two modest but secure occupations:

It seemed like I had everything I wanted. My mom worked at a good
paying job and was doing great. My dad worked at night, so he was
around when I’d get home from school. He cooked and everything, ’cause
he went to culinary school, so he liked to cook. I just thought of it as the
way it was supposed to be, and I still think that’s the way it should be.

Being born into a single-parent home might evoke less enthusiasm, yet

many of these children originally felt cared for and ﬁ nancially secure. Even
though he lived in the suburbs, where two parents were the norm, Richard
looked back fondly on early life with his single mother. With his neighbors’
acceptance, he “never had a problem saying my parents are divorced. I never
got nasty looks or got treated like an outsider.” He noticed the difference but
did not feel stigmatized or deprived:

d o m e s t i c d e a d l o c k s a n d d e c l i n i n g f o r t u n e s

From the beginning, it was just me and my mom. My mother was
everything—the provider and a super-involved mother. Everyone else
on the block had the mom and the dad, so I realized that there was a
deﬁ nite difference, but the relationship I had with my mother, I felt
like I was the luckiest guy in the world. My mother is so great, noth-
ing could beat that, and I didn’t want anything else.

An extended network of relatives and friends helped offset the drawbacks

of single parenthood and even offered some advantages. For Richard, regular
visits with his father and a close relationship with his mother’s boyfriend cre-
ated a web of support:

My father was always up for weekends, plus Neil was like a substitute
dad. He took the place of a father, even though they weren’t married.
He always had time for me, and it seemed like he always had me in
mind. As far as I was concerned, this was normal. I really didn’t feel
like I was missing out on anything.

For Lucius, living in a large house with his grandparents, aunts, uncles,

and cousins more than compensated for his father’s absence:

Most people have a nuclear family, but I lived in an extended family.
Your grandparents are around, your uncles, your cousins. The only
disadvantage was being in the situation where I wasn’t raised with my
father. But I think, on the whole, there was more of an advantage—a
bigger support group, having a lot of people around.

All kinds of families—from two-parent homes with one or two earners

to single-parent homes embedded in an extended network—were able to
provide a wealth of supports. Despite outward differences, these families con-
tained attentive, ﬁ nancially secure, and seemingly satisﬁ ed caretakers. Chil-
dren looked back on homes they deemed both “normal” and happy. Yet this
early stability did not last. Gabriel’s “perfect” suburban family proved to be
an illusion:

I thought we were very lucky, that we had a great family. We had a
house in a decent neighborhood; I always knew I could go to either
parent; we did a lot of stuff together. I was too young to really appreci-
ate it, but I felt happy and satisﬁ ed. I had no idea what was going on
behind the scenes.

Nina found it was easier to ignore the problems lurking in her parents’

relationship all along:

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

Would I say there was a lot of love? Probably not, but I never paid
attention to it. It was just like that was your mom and dad, and they
were always there.

Just as many types of events can mark a turning point when a problem-

plagued family begins to chart a more hopeful course, a range of unexpected
challenges—from a deepening marital stalemate to a destructive breakup to a
shrinking care network—can knock a family off a once promising path.

Taking a Turn for the Worse

Almost half of those with promising family beginnings enjoyed stable support
throughout childhood, but the rest lived in families that took a turn for the
worse. While it might be tempting to focus solely on how a parental breakup
or a mother’s job can precipitate a downward turn, children in all kinds of
families reached this conclusion, including those whose parents stayed together
and those with mothers who stayed home.

Neither an enduring marriage nor

a domestically centered mother could insulate a child from a downward drift-
ing path. Just as some lasting marriages brought beneﬁ cial changes, others
deteriorated. Just as some mothers found gratiﬁ cation in domesticity, others
became demoralized and depressed. Just as a parental breakup could bring bet-
ter conditions for some children, it worsened life for others. And even though
shared breadwinning created more collaborative and ﬁ nancially secure homes
for most, it brought more conﬂ ict and exhaustion to others.

In the long run, a family’s response to the challenges it faced matters more

than its particular form. When a parent’s morale languished in a traditional mar-
riage or unresolved work-family conﬂ icts deepened in a dual-earning partnership,
family life suffered. When a father abandoned a mother who could not cope,
single-parent homes followed a similar path. And when vulnerable families lost
economic and practical contributions from extended and ﬁ ctive kin, children also
lost much-needed emotional and practical resources. In short, children in all types
of families lost support if their household could not resolve the crises it faced.

deepening marital stalemates

Lasting marriages could not shelter children if parents could not overcome
the difﬁ culties they encountered. Some saw parents become disheartened and
estranged when mothers withdrew from work to focus on domestic duties.
For others, their parents’ inability to solve the dilemmas and stresses of com-
bining breadwinning and caretaking took a similar toll. In both situations, a

d o m e s t i c d e a d l o c k s a n d d e c l i n i n g f o r t u n e s

couple’s failure to ﬁ nd satisfying work and caretaking strategies reverberated
in children’s lives.

Reluctantly Opting for Separate Spheres

Those reared by a home-centered mother and a breadwinning father are
divided in their outlooks. If both parents were satisﬁ ed with their separate
spheres, children support the arrangement. But if mothers or fathers seemed
dissatisﬁ ed or regretful, children noticed. When parents conveyed ambiva-
lence or doubt about moving toward 1950s-style traditionalism, their chil-
dren focused on how cultural pressures or social obstacles led their parents to
make unfulﬁ lling choices, even if they did so with the best of intentions.

Some stay-at-home mothers made fateful decisions long before their chil-

dren’s birth. Internalizing the injunction to place marriage and family before
work and career could exact heavy costs in the longer run. Hannah grew up
hearing her mother tell stories about lost opportunities and roads not taken:

She always told the story [of how] she gave up a scholarship to marry my
father, which would have made her life go in a totally different direction.
She looks back now and blames him, but she felt she had to stay home
[even though] she preferred working and being out in the world.

As Lauren’s mother grew increasingly frustrated by limited work options, she

also became haunted by an early decision not to pursue a career in publishing:

When she graduated from college, her ﬁ rst job was in the publishing
industry, but then she met my father and got married and that was the
end of it. She liked having kids, but when she was older, she resented
it more—she wanted something more than the secretarial jobs.

Others had mothers who developed a satisfying career and then relin-

quished it when child-rearing pressures mounted.

At the age of six, Sarah

watched her mother struggle with an unplanned pregnancy and, faced with
the arrival of another child, give up a teaching career. While Sarah’s mother
acted on a strong conviction that this decision would beneﬁ t her children,
she also could not hide her disappointment and resentment. Despite the best
motives, her conception of responsible mothering backﬁ red, since Sarah came
to see her mother’s choice as a dismaying turning point:

When my sister was born, that was a tumultuous event. [My mom’s]
job had started up, career-wise, so she wasn’t too happy. It wasn’t so
intense that she would have terminated the pregnancy, but she felt she
had to be home. Eventually she went back part-time, but never really
worked full-time again. She lost her place, and it never was the same.

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

She always had a lot of conﬂ icts about work and home and opted to be
really committed to family stuff, but also resented it.

In addition to cultural pressures, practical exigencies led some mothers

reluctantly and ambivalently toward domesticity. After her younger sister
arrived when Jennifer was eight, her parents grudgingly adopted a more tra-
ditional arrangement that upset the delicate balance constructed when they
were caring for only one child:

It was basically equal until my sister was born. It was about who can
make it to a school function and who couldn’t. When Amy was born,
those things weren’t happening anymore. Before my mother had a
full-time job, but then my father basically was the money-maker, so
that caused a conﬂ ict. My mom went crazy, ’cause she didn’t want to
be tied up in the house.

Finally, some children believed obstacles at work, not internalized guilt,

prompted a mother’s reluctant move toward domesticity. When her mother
faced discrimination and then lost her job, Ashley worried that this turn of
events took an emotional and ﬁ nancial toll on both parents:

My mom was a mortgage specialist, but people were getting ahead
of her. She took on more responsibilities but never had a real title or
anything, probably because she’s a woman and Black. So a few years
ago, when they were downsizing, she lost her job. Since then, it just
hasn’t worked out. So she’s been at home feeling really down, and dad’s
been upset and angry.

Regardless of the source or timing of a family’s turn toward traditional-

ism, it reﬂ ected a largely unquestioned assumption that, when work and
family demands conﬂ ict, mothers are responsible for the home and fathers
are duty-bound to support their wives and children. Whether couples took
a dissatisfying turn before they became parents or in response to conﬂ icts
and pressures after children arrived, they did what they believed to be the
right thing. Yet children could see how these well-intentioned actions often
clashed with other, often unacknowledged, desires. When career-oriented
mothers chose home instead, or when fathers found themselves doing all of
the breadwinning despite a preference for sharing, their ambivalence spilled
into daily domestic life.

Mothers who reluctantly adopted separate spheres lost economic auton-

omy, personal control, and a sense of purpose beyond the home. When
Jennifer’s mother left the workplace after her second child arrived, conﬂ ict

d o m e s t i c d e a d l o c k s a n d d e c l i n i n g f o r t u n e s

over money signaled a shifting balance of power in the family. Jennifer felt
her mother’s loss of a separate income left her father with too much power in
the relationship:

My father basically became the money-maker, so that caused a conﬂ ict.
If he would get mad, he would use a control method and say, “I’m
not gonna pay the insurance for your car,” or something like that. So
there was tension over how much power bringing in the money meant.
’Cause it was the same thing with me. “You don’t bring in any money,
so you don’t have a say.”

Eduardo had similar worries, speculating that his father’s control of the

purse strings contributed to his inﬁ delity as well as his mother’s fear of
abandonment:

It got worse. They’re not as close as they were. My mom worries when
he wants to take a vacation because she thinks he might stay away.
I wouldn’t doubt that he has other women. He’s got a lot of control.

Even when fathers seemed fair and caring, some children were troubled by

their mothers’ withering morale. Sarah saw her mother become increasingly
depressed and “overinvolved” after leaving a gratifying career:

She was the supermom, but she just seemed really unhappy and
depressed a lot of time. I wish my mom would have worked so that
she would be happier.

For Stephanie, her mother’s material advantages could not make up for

the mounting discontent:

My father got the better deal. He could go out and do his job and come
home and have a hot meal on the table. My mother got things that
maybe she wouldn’t have gotten, like ﬁ nancial stability, but she was
lacking more. So I think she was dissatisﬁ ed.

Other children believed the costs of unwelcome traditionalism fell more

heavily on their fathers. Being the sole support of a family on limited earn-
ings exacted a heavy price. Eduardo watched his father grow distant as he
struggled to support four children on the modest earnings of a “maintenance
worker” who cleaned ofﬁ ces even after better-paid employees went home:

My father showed little things, like saying what if he wouldn’t be here.
’Cause he’s always been working, and he was tired of things and wanted
to take it easy, enjoy life more. He said it himself, he’s been doing a lot!

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

Ashley watched her father grow angry and distant when her mother lost

her job, even though he continued to count on a steady job at a bank:

He sits behind a desk. I don’t know what he’s doing, but he’s making
his money. And I think that’s what attributes to the chip on his shoul-
der, because he’s like, “I’m working, you’re not. I’m making money,
you’re not.” He sees her as being lazy and not going out there to look,
but he hasn’t been there for us either. Even though he’s been there, he’s
been very distant from everybody.

As mothers languished and fathers became disheartened, unwelcome or

ambivalent traditionalism spilt over into children’s lives. Some felt their
mothers became too involved. Sarah strained under the weighty expectations
of a mom who was “overly responsible”:

She would make these beautiful toys and throw these incredible birth-
day parties, but all along [it came] with an edge to it—“in return,
I want you to be devoted to me.” If we did something separate from
her, that was a major problem. She didn’t want us to grow up. I was
overly cherished, if that’s possible. So I was making distance because
I felt I had to protect myself from this invasion.

Karen also believed too much time at home, with too little else to do,

prompted her mother to make inappropriate demands for undivided loyalty:

My mom seemed unhappy, and as I grew up, she started getting really
weird. She felt competitive with my friends, feeling like I liked them
more than I liked her. She was overprotective and got a little crazy
at times, telling me not to repeat the same mistakes that she made.
I didn’t feel comfortable inviting friends over, and having dinner at
my kitchen table was tense.

The same dynamic contributing to overinvolvement among mothers

could leave fathers estranged and insufﬁ ciently involved. For Lauren, the
move toward traditionalism left her father spending too much time at the
ofﬁ ce and much less time with her:

It changed over the years. When I was younger, we would do a lot of
stuff together, and then it separated along gender lines. We were about
as traditional as they come. My father spent more time at work. He
was like an absent father.

Carlos, too, noticed a change as his father began adding trips to a local bar

onto already long days as a supervisor for the transit authority:

d o m e s t i c d e a d l o c k s a n d d e c l i n i n g f o r t u n e s

My father started to work a lot of nights and overtime, so there were
times I would only see him like ﬁ ve minutes a day. Then he used
to leave work, go to the bar. My mom’s worried; it’s four o’clock in
the morning, and he should have come home already. He’d rather be
drinking instead of being with us.

When circumstances pulled parents reluctantly and ambivalently toward

traditionalism, the result—whether it involved a mother’s declining morale,
a father’s estrangement, or rising marital strains—eroded family cohesion.
Claudia wistfully recalled an earlier time when her mother enjoyed work-
ing at a bakery, her father spent time around the house, and she attended
a neighbor’s day care center. Her mother’s decision to stay home when her
father faced longer working days as a radio executive became a disruption to
their family rhythm despite everyone’s wish:

I always liked it better when they both worked. It just seems like the
sort of thing adults should do. Everybody else had both their parents
working, and I had fun at the babysitters, ’cause I got to play with a
bunch of other kids. Before we would do things together. Now we’re
not as close because my father works twelve hours a day and has very
peculiar hours, which he hates.

These rising tensions and conﬂ icts left young women and men feeling

torn between the assumed beneﬁ ts and hidden costs of their parents’ strate-
gies. Despite the injunction to be an intensive parent, Sarah had decidedly
mixed feelings about her mother’s choice to do just that:

I think she thought she was doing something good for us, to change
her life and sacriﬁ ce for us. It might have been slightly less secure, but
it would have been better if my mother was happier working.

Karen also concluded there should—and could—have been a better way:

I’m grateful that I had someone watching over me twenty-four hours
a day, but I wish she had done something to enhance herself. I wish
she had been more examining of herself and what she wanted to do,
more secure and conﬁ dent, because she could have done anything. My
brother and I would have been ﬁ ne.

In the long run, reluctant traditionalism held unforeseen consequences for

parents and their children. Though few doubted their parents tried to do the
right thing, they witnessed the ways good intentions can backﬁ re when they
conﬂ ict with more deeply felt but unacknowledged wishes. When mothers

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

were pushed or pulled away from the workplace despite their desires, and
fathers were pressured to work too much, the result could be declining paren-
tal morale, rising domestic strains, and eroding family cohesion.

struggles in dual-earner marriages

Children in homes where both parents established strong, lasting commit-
ments to paid jobs are not immune from difﬁ culties. A mismatch in the
outlooks, opportunities, and practices of dual-earning parents can produce
difﬁ culties as intractable as those in more traditional homes.

Most children

growing up in this setting had stable, supportive family paths, but about
one in ﬁ ve experienced eroding parental morale and rising family conﬂ ict.
These dual-earner homes faced different dilemmas than their traditional
counterparts, but their failure to ﬁ nd satisfying resolutions had similar con-
sequences. If a two-income couple could not ﬁ nd a ﬂ exible, equitable, and
mutually acceptable way to apportion caretaking and paid work, the growing
mismatch brought tension and conﬂ ict.

Some observed a clash between mothers who sought equality and fathers

who wished to be in control. Though Michelle was reared in a middle-class
suburb and Theresa lived in an inner-city neighborhood, both observed an
escalating “power struggle” when fathers opposed their wives’ efforts to build
a career and get more support at home. Michelle’s father resisted her mother’s
determination to work:

My mom was very independent, very strong-willed, very get-up-and-go.
My father was more traditional. His mother was the typical obedient
wife, and he expected the same from my mom. She deﬁ nitely wanted to
make something of herself—which was for the better, but it was a recipe
for disaster.

Theresa also saw an escalating power struggle, which centered on her

mother’s refusal to cater to her father’s wishes:

My father was demanding. For example, he wanted his food done, so
my mother’s like, “Get it yourself.” My mother wasn’t really happy in
the relationship, and she used to let us know this and this is going on.

Unequal opportunities, not differing worldviews, could also contrib-

ute to rising domestic tensions. Especially when fathers faced limited job
options, conﬂ icts could emerge even when a couple preferred a more egalitar-
ian arrangement. Shawn’s father never recovered from losing a promising job
when he needed to take the children to school:

d o m e s t i c d e a d l o c k s a n d d e c l i n i n g f o r t u n e s

Mom had to be at work, so [my dad] took us to school, but they
wouldn’t let him arrive late, so he had to quit. Since then, he’s worked
for some messenger service and things like that, but it just wasn’t the
same anymore. It wasn’t his fault, but ever since, any time he’s out of a
job, he’ll start drinking. I wish I could have took my brother to school
so he still had that job.

A stressful, dead-end job prompted a similar reaction from Jermaine’s

father, who gradually withdrew from family life:

They were both working, and they both took care of the ﬁ nancial situ-
ation together, but he wished to have a better job. He came home mad
a lot, and some evenings he did not come home. He went out to the
bar, and if we needed him, we had to go and get him.

When employed mothers took on a disproportionate load either at home

or at work, children, especially daughters, sensed the buildup of marital injus-
tices, even when their parents were reluctant to acknowledge or address this
dynamic. Patricia grew up in an afﬂ uent, predominantly white neighborhood
with two professional parents, while Chrystal lived in a much poorer African-
American community, but both believed their fathers had not performed a
fair share of the housework. Patricia wondered why her father’s “laziness” did
not provoke her mother’s anger:

For a long time, I’ve had a feeling it was really my mom who was pull-
ing all the weight. Even though she works full-time, dad doesn’t do
anything. He can’t cook for himself; he doesn’t know how to do his
own laundry. It makes me really upset, because he still doesn’t see it,
but it also bothers me immensely that she lets herself be put in that
position.

Chrystal agreed, noting it was ﬁ ne for her mother to be the main bread-

winner, but not for her father to resist taking up the slack at home:

My mother’s been the one who’s always worked full-time. My father’s
contribution has been sporadic. As we got older, we started resenting
him, ’cause she’s been the one who’s been doing everything, and he’s
always found a way to make it seem as if he was the one holding it all
together.

A clash of worldviews, constricted workplace and child care support, or

simple resistance to sharing domestic tasks could all produce a dual-earning
mismatch. Whatever the cause, these couples became locked in a cycle of

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

unresolved conﬂ ict, personal frustration, and seeming injustice. Unable to
ﬁ nd mutually supportive ways to share caring and earning, unacknowledged
struggles over who should do what often produced growing concern among
the children who observed these battles. Like those reared in traditional
homes, these young people wished their parents could have created more
ﬂ exible and equitable ways to apportion family tasks. But they did not nec-
essarily blame their parents for these troubles. Like Chrystal, children often
recognized the social constraints their parents faced and wished they had
enjoyed more options:

I think if my mother had more choices, and my father, too, then she
wouldn’t have had to work as hard as she had to—not just at her job
but also at home.

Unhappily Ever After

Traditional marriages could leave some mothers unhappy and some fathers
ill equipped to support the family, while dual-earner marriages could leave
some wives feeling overburdened and some husbands chaﬁ ng at the loss of
control. These disparate arrangements had different dynamics, but shared a
parental reluctance—or inability—to adopt more ﬂ exible, egalitarian strate-
gies for sharing breadwinning and caretaking. When this happened, children
had mixed reactions. Most, like Sarah, wished their parents had been able to
break away from frustrating and conﬂ icting patterns:

They had the same conﬂ icts over and over that never resolved them-
selves—about how much to let go of the kids, about parenting stuff.
My father would have rather had my mother work if she were happier,
but she insulated herself.

But some wondered if a separation might have been the better course.

When children no longer provided a small buffer zone or a reason for staying
together, the fragile bonds holding together a troubled marriage could break.
Several years after Michelle’s younger brother left for college, her parents
announced they were parting:

There were threats all along, when I was growing up—we’re gonna
divorce soon, and that sort of thing. I was very uneasy about it, but
every time they threatened to divorce and ended up staying together, it
was a false sense of relief, really. Once both kids were out of the house,
they realized they couldn’t live just the two of them by themselves.

d o m e s t i c d e a d l o c k s a n d d e c l i n i n g f o r t u n e s

Aware of their parents’ disappointments, everyone wanted to avoid these

conundrums in their own futures. Giving up hope that her parents would
ever ﬁ nd a way to settle their differences, Patricia resolved instead to learn
from her parents’ mistakes and avoid the “trap” into which they had fallen:

I think they’re both lost causes. They just deserve each other. My mom
has actually said stuff to me like, “Don’t marry someone like your
father; don’t fall into this trap.” And I won’t.

As children looked back on the downward turn in their family paths, they

wondered if the fear of change had been more destructive than change itself.

Joel wished his parents had summoned the nerve to take a risk and try more
ﬂ exible strategies:

I guess they became accepting of their relationship, just like other
things. It’s a lot of “what ifs.” They never found out what the alterna-
tives are. You have to explore the options. At least you tried, but not
trying kills you.

Change is not always for the better, however. When a marital breakup left

children without a committed breadwinner or a satisﬁ ed caretaker, this shift
seemed no better to the children in these situations than did staying the course.

“worst case” breakups

Though some children were relieved when a parental separation ended pro-
tracted conﬂ ict, others were distressed to ﬁ nd their parents’ seemingly happy
marriages fall apart. When the news of an impending breakup came as a
surprise, a presumption of stability became the ﬁ rst casualty. With two seem-
ingly content professional parents, Gabriel greeted the news of their divorce
as he turned thirteen with astonishment and grief:

I thought we were living a very good life, and everyone was happy.
I had no idea my parents weren’t getting along. So when my mother
came into my room and said, “Your dad and I don’t get along anymore,
and we’re gonna get a divorce,” it came straight out of left ﬁ eld. It was
just culture shock, like someone splashing cold water on my face.

Though parental breakups brought relief from adversity and set the

stage for expanding support for the children in the previous chapter, life
took a turn for the worse in other families. Like those who lived amid
ongoing but deteriorating marriages, the children who endured destructive

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

parental breakups focused on their parents’ inability to renegotiate more
ﬂ exible arrangements for breadwinning and caretaking. When children
felt let down by fathers who ﬂ ed or mothers who could not step into the
breach, they lost a once taken for granted sense of emotional and economic
security.

Flight, not Flexibility

Harmful breakups typically involved the loss of a once responsible and car-
ing parent, most often a father who ﬂ ed the family rather than accept a more
ﬂ exible gender strategy. A parent’s abandonment could take place slowly or
abruptly, but it took a heavier toll on those who were taken by surprise.
When Barbara was eight, her father had a “midlife crisis” and gradually
withdrew from her life:

My father got it in his head to give up his job, sell the house, load
the family in a Winnebago, and head to California. He got despon-
dent, started drinking more, got weird. The transition period we went
through across the country, he pulled away emotionally, and so the
physical part was just an extension of that.

Hank felt even less prepared when his father, without warning or explana-

tion, failed to return from a trip to the local drugstore:

I thought he was the perfect father, so when he left, it was a total sur-
prise. I remember him saying, “Be back in ﬁ ve minutes,” and I didn’t
see him again for ﬁ ve years.

Even when children understood what drove their parents to part, they did

not understand why it should also mean severing their parental tie. Looking
back, Hank could sympathize with his father’s desire to separate from an
alcoholic partner, but could not forgive him for cutting the connection to
him and his sister:

My mother was drinking a lot, and I’m sure he gave a lot of hints that
he was not happy. I think her drinking gave him an excuse to ﬁ nally
say, “All right, let me get out of here.” You can understand why he
didn’t want to be with her, but why didn’t he want to be with his kids
anymore?

Others saw their departing fathers as victims, rather than culprits, whose

social disadvantages and personal demons left them unable to sustain the
“good provider” ethic. Lucius lamented his father’s decline, but tried not to
place too much blame:

d o m e s t i c d e a d l o c k s a n d d e c l i n i n g f o r t u n e s

He was a computer programmer, but drugs caught up to him, and he
skated downhill. If he didn’t have those problems, I would have been
better off. My father’s intelligent. He can earn money. He’s not lazy.
He wanted to help. It’s just the drugs and the problems he faced.

A variety of reasons prompted these fathers to leave, but all of them left

children without needed ﬁ nancial and personal support. While a parental
breakup brought some families relief from economic difﬁ culty, most expe-
rienced a sharp erosion of their economic security.

As Barbara noted, her

father’s contributions dropped precipitously even before he left for good:

But it was a constant test to ﬁ gure out how we were gonna survive, and
it got worse and worse. When my mom ﬁ nally took over the ﬁ nances,
my father was like, “Well, okay, I really don’t need to be around.”

Losing a family breadwinner could also mean losing a once involved caretaker,

and if this happened, it magniﬁ ed the costs. When Jasmine’s father left to live
with a new girlfriend, she mourned the loss of his daily support as the household’s
chief cook and afterschool sitter—a loss deepened by knowing that his new part-
ner’s children were now eating his food and receiving his attention:

I was used to him always being there, cooking dinner for us. He was
the housewife during the day because my mother didn’t cook and
didn’t get home till 5:30. So after he moved out and then moved in
with another woman and her children, it made me feel worse ’cause
I felt that he was leaving me to be with other kids. I miss him, and
I know he misses me.

When Catherine was ﬁ ve, her mother asked her father to leave despite

his participation as a “kind and gentle” parent. Although he took seem-
ingly heroic steps to remained involved with his two daughters, Catherine
mourned her father’s departure and blamed her mother for his exile from the
household:

I hated my mother because she broke up with my father, and I still
have a lot of resentment. I really cried for him. He used to sneak into
the window when we were eating breakfast, and whenever he heard
my mother coming, he’d go out the window. In hindsight, they were
not meant to be together, but I was very, very sad for my father.

Whether a father left willingly or found himself exiled, the loss of his

involvement and support could clearly mark a downward turn in children’s
lives. These “lost fathers” did not—and often could not—fulﬁ ll traditional

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

breadwinning responsibilities, but they were also unable or unwilling to
develop new ways of providing care.

Unprepared to “Do It All”

Wrenching in itself, a father’s departure compounded children’s difﬁ culties
when it left mothers unprepared. In traditional households, mothers often
lacked the experience, skills, and desire to become the main breadwinner. If
they could not adjust to this new and unexpected challenge, it produced a
drastic decline in children’s economic fortunes and daily care. When Hank’s
father left, he realized how his mother’s reliance on her husband’s paycheck
had left them vulnerable. In addition to his ire toward his father, Hank felt
angry at his mother for placing her own and her children’s security in the
hands of a man who deserted them all:

Every time we paid for something, my father took out his wallet. My
mom never worked, so she didn’t have a job, nothing. She ended up
taking welfare, which I could not stand. We would have been better
off if she didn’t listen to my father, went to college, and at least had
something she could fall back on if this happens, which she never
expected.

A father’s desertion combined with a mother’s economic vulnerability to

leave some families living in poverty.

When Nina’s father left with little

warning, no forwarding address, and no support for his wife and two daugh-
ters, Nina watched her stay-at-home mother “give up her pride” and go on
welfare because she could not ﬁ gure out how to build a life outside the home.
Her mother’s reluctance to adjust to her father’s disappearance triggered a
descent from the middle class to barely getting by:

My mother ended up going on welfare. We went from a nice place to
living in a really cruddy building. And she’s still in the same apart-
ment. To this day, my sister will not speak to my father because of
what he’s done to us.

While the costs of a father’s desertion fell heaviest on families with moth-

ers who did not have a job or the experience, training, and self-conﬁ dence to
ﬁ nd one, having an employed mother did not ensure economic safety, espe-
cially if she faced limited work opportunities and inadequate child care. All
seemed well in Jamal’s preschool years, despite his father’s absence, because
his mother had a seemingly secure career with the city’s transit system. When
she could not ﬁ nd care for her children and then lost her job, his family
fortunes took an ominous turn:

d o m e s t i c d e a d l o c k s a n d d e c l i n i n g f o r t u n e s

Till [I was] ﬁ ve or six, things were going real well. She was working
as a token clerk, and ﬁ nances was great. But she got ﬁ red because she
had three kids, and she couldn’t work and do it all. So she went to
waitressing, and spotty jobs which weren’t a decent salary, and then
it just got harder. So she was on public assistance by when I was ten
or so.

Of course, single mothers faced many other challenges even when they

did not suffer a precipitous ﬁ nancial slide. An inability to get help from
others could prompt declining morale and rising stress among both home-
making and employed single moms. Stay-at-home mothers were more likely
to become isolated and depressed, while working mothers could feel over-
whelmed by the intensiﬁ ed pressures of juggling work and home. Although
Hank’s mother was home, her worsening morale left him feeling alone and
neglected nonetheless:

It was really hard living with my mother and sister, sometimes nei-
ther of them home, sometimes my mother home, but upstairs, yell-
ing and crying. The dog was my best friend. My mom really didn’t
do much. Once in a while she’d clean up, but she’d watch TV pretty
much. When I ﬁ nally told her, “You weren’t exactly the ideal mother,”
she said, “At least I was there for you.” No! You weren’t. You were
there because you had no choice, you had no job, you had to stay in
that house. I’m sure if you had a choice you wouldn’t have been there
either.

And though Catherine’s hard-working mother was clearly attentive,

her attention became obsessive and hostile—a shift Catherine attributed
to fatigue brought on by juggling long working hours with caring for two
daughters on her own:

We were not neglected; she had her eye on us. But if you so much as
stepped too loudly across the kitchen, you’d better run. It was because
she had to work twelve, sixteen-hour days and would constantly
become exhausted. When she came home, you had to be very careful.
She was always in a bad mood, and we just knew she was worn.

In the worst cases, the unexpected loss of a partner left mothers so debili-

tated they also lost conﬁ dence in their abilities as a worker and parent. When
Jasmine’s father departed to live with another woman, her mother became
despondent and bedridden. Accustomed to being proud of a mother who
had “moved up to the second to highest job you can have” in her ofﬁ ce,

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

Jasmine watched her withdraw into a “private shell” and surrender her hard-
won accomplishments:

For ten years, she moved up, and I used to tell my friends, “She’s ofﬁ ce
manager of such and such.” But she had pretty much of a nervous
breakdown and took off of work. She hasn’t really gotten herself back
together the way she used to. That’s what makes me angry. She used to
dress up, go to work every day. To see every morning with her still in
the bed, it seemed like I’m taking care of her.

When a parental breakup left a mother unprepared and overwhelmed,

children watched them wilt under the crushing weight of new expectations.
Though a father’s abandonment triggered this decline, these mothers also
lacked workplace and neighborhood supports to help them create new ways
to provide love, care, and economic support. These circumstances added
insult to the injury of a father’s rejection. Watching her mother struggle
alone and unprepared, Nina blamed her mother’s limited opportunities, not
her heart or desire:

I know she was frustrated that she couldn’t give us more. I truly believe
that if she had the opportunity to work, she would have. She would
have never been on public assistance if somebody gave her the oppor-
tunity. So I knew, just watching my mother, I never wanted to depend
on a man, because she really depended on my father’s salary.

In contrast to breakups that brought relief from domestic conﬂ ict and

ﬁ nancial insecurity, these were marked by a breadwinner’s abandonment and
the consequent ﬁ nancial and emotional descent of a once “good enough” care-
taker. When neither parent was able (or willing) to develop a more expansive
gender strategy, the fracturing of a traditional marital bargain left children
on shaky ground.

from the frying pan into the ﬁ re

A parental breakup sometimes had its worst consequences when a new marriage
supplanted an earlier one. In contrast to the children who gained support and
happier homes when a parent remarried, these children lost support and family
cohesion. In some cases, they watched an independent mother cede power; in
others, they became estranged from a once involved father; in still others, a new
stepparent pushed them aside. All these remarriages brought family shifts in
which mothers and fathers took on more stereotypical “roles.”

d o m e s t i c d e a d l o c k s a n d d e c l i n i n g f o r t u n e s

Richard had not worried about his parents’ divorce until his mother

remarried. Though his parents lived apart, they shared responsibility for rear-
ing him. During the week, he lived with his mother, who enjoyed her career
at an investment ﬁ rm; he spent every weekend with his father, and felt lucky
to have a close relationship with both. When he was twelve, however, his
mother acquiesced to her new husband’s wish for her to stay home:

It was ﬁ ne till my mom got married, and that’s when the problems
started. Harry wanted a pet and was very serious about her not work-
ing, so she tried to be a house woman. But she was frustrated and
began to feel really bad about herself. When she left work, she felt
very weak, very dependent, and I felt like, “Wow, what are you doing
with yourself ?”

As Richard watched his mother give up her job—and, in his view, her

“self ”—she grew distant and unhappy, prompting a sense of loss he had not
felt before. He began to resent his mother for giving up her identity and his
father for leaving him in the home of an uncaring stranger:

When my mom got married again, that’s when I realized it was a very
messed-up situation. [My stepfather] was very jealous and wanted me
out of the way, and I could sense it. It made me look back on my life
and say, “What went wrong?” All of a sudden, my parents weren’t
super people. Mom, how could you do this? And dad, where are you?
I felt I got dealt a bad hand.

William and Noah were disappointed and disillusioned when their involved

and seemingly admirable fathers chose a new partner they could not accept or
understand. For most of William’s childhood, he took pride in his parents’
dual-career partnership. His mother thrived in her banking career, while his
father, a lawyer, did more than his share of child care. As he entered his teens,
however, he discovered his father had become involved with a woman almost
twenty years younger. Reluctantly and painfully, he lost respect for someone
who had once seemed “a dashing young man” and “the family’s core”:

When I was a kid, my dad would read to me every night. He read me
the whole Lord of the Rings series, which took like a couple of years.
He was very, very involved, a big solid family man, but then he had
an affair. If [the marriage] had ended under different circumstances,
he would probably be the nucleus of the new family, but because he
went off with another woman who was so young and unappealing,
I felt disgusted.

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

At age sixteen, Noah also had to redeﬁ ne what once looked like a stable,

happy past. His father seemed content as a lawyer, father, and husband until
his mother, a high school teacher, discovered him having an affair and asked
him to leave. At that moment, Noah “found out that nothing was what it
seemed”:

Up until the point they split up, I thought we had the perfect fam-
ily. It was a very dull, white-bread suburb, and we just ﬁ gured they
wanted this life. I thought my father was happy and that turned out to
be absolutely the opposite. [It was] a total shock.

Richard, Gabriel, and Noah all felt disillusioned by a parent who opted

for a more stereotypically traditional relationship. Some felt doubly disap-
pointed. When Gabriel’s parents both remarried, each crumpled under the
demands of a new partner. His previously caring, custodial father acquiesced
to his new wife, who asked Gabriel, then an admittedly “rebellious” teenager,
to leave. When he turned to his mother for help, she, too, placed her new
partner’s wishes above his needs. At seventeen, Gabriel found himself living
with his girlfriend’s family and wondering what happened to parents who
once were so attentive:

When I was having a hard time with my dad’s new wife, I called
my mother and asked to stay there. But after a couple of weeks, the
guy she was with, who was domineering, told me that your mother
doesn’t want you here anymore. She’s sorry now, but there’s absolutely
no excuse. You never can apologize enough. Blood should be thicker
than water, but I didn’t have many advocates then.

These new partnerships involved stereotypic gender strategies, not a ﬂ ex-

ible sharing of earning and caretaking. Mothers ceded their independence,
fathers became less involved, and stepparents failed to contribute practical or
psychological support, leaving children to feel let down and left behind.

disappearing villages

Those with eroding family paths also lost the safety net of surrogate par-
ents who could supplement or substitute for biological mothers and fathers.
Jasmine viewed her grandmother as a third parent, who gave her time, atten-
tion, and money even before her father left:

My grandmother was very important. I was pretty much over there all
the time. I would spend weekends with her and go to church with her.

d o m e s t i c d e a d l o c k s a n d d e c l i n i n g f o r t u n e s

And all the money she made, she gave to us. She had no other grand-
kids, just me and my brother. So it was anything I ever wanted.

Brianna moved in with her grandparents when her single mother felt too

overwhelmed to care for a toddler:

When I talk to people who had that quote unquote idyllic childhood,
the time in the South with my grandparents is the only time in my life
I can think of. That was the happiest time of my life.

Yet unanticipated circumstances could shatter this support. When

Jasmine’s grandmother died as she entered middle school, it left her feeling
even more bereft than her father’s departure:

It was so great when my parents were together and my grandmother
was alive, so when she died, it was really hard. I lost the money, and
I lost her just being there. We were going through a real trauma in
my whole family, so when [my father] left, it was like another death.
I don’t think it would have been any better if they’d stayed together,
but my grandmother being alive would have been much more of a
difference.

A similar turning point came when Brianna’s mother remarried and asked

her to leave a secure and happy life with her grandparents—“the best parents
I ever had”—to return to a household that never seemed like a home:

I didn’t want to leave the South. I was moving back up North because
my mom had just given birth to my little sister, and she wanted me
back. The father was a man I’d never even heard of, and my mom was
just never meant to be a parent, so getting back with her was totally
counterproductive.

Even when a care network remained nearby, it did not guarantee secu-

rity or stability. Lucius’s life worsened when his grandparents “made a bad
decision, ﬁ nancially.” Their economic crisis reverberated through his three-
generation household, leaving all of them on the brink of poverty:

One bad decision by my grandparents slowed my family down. They
lost money, lost time, almost lost the roof over our heads, stuff like
that. It was scary; it got hard. I guess that’s life.

Sarah’s family life also spiraled downward when her nearby grandparents

became an emotional drain. Far from helping out, they added to her mother’s
caretaking burdens and undermined her parents’ relationship:

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

My grandparents were right next door, but they got more and more
crazy, so it wasn’t a good thing. My grandfather’s mentally ill, and my
grandmother was always depressed, and they were miserable together.
They made things harder for my mother, and treated my father badly,
so it became a detriment.

These children either lost parental surrogates who had once provided

essential support or found that extended kin added to their parents’ bur-
dens rather than lessening them. The loss of a supportive safety net deepened
the difﬁ culties brought on by a father’s abandonment, a mother’s declining
morale, or a couple’s deteriorating marriage.

what might have been

When a family path took a downward turn, children from all kinds of fami-
lies experienced cascading and compounding losses. For some, traditional
arrangements left stay-at-home mothers and breadwinning fathers chaﬁ ng
under the strictures of ﬁ xed gender boundaries. For others, dual-earning par-
ents could not develop satisfying ways of sharing. Still others suffered when
their fathers left and their mothers struggled to adjust. And ﬁ nally, some
homes lost an additional earner or caregiver who had provided an emotional,
practical, and ﬁ nancial safety net. Lurking beneath these apparent differ-
ences, families with declining fortunes shared some similarities. Lauren felt
her parents’ estranged marriage closely resembled the single-parent homes
she knew:

Later in high school, I met more people who didn’t have that same
traditional family. I have one very close friend whose parents weren’t
together, and she lives with her mother, and it reminded me a lot of
my mother. Even though my parents weren’t divorced, it was a similar
situation.

Many also recognized how social conditions, and especially a lack of other

alternatives, constrained their parents’ choices. Chrystal rued her mother’s
limited options:

I wish my mother had stood up for herself more, but she did the best
she could under the circumstances. I just wish the circumstances were
better.

A set of diverse events created unexpected challenges to families with estab-

lished gender boundaries. When parents could not develop more ﬂ exible ways

d o m e s t i c d e a d l o c k s a n d d e c l i n i n g f o r t u n e s

to apportion paid and domestic work, rising difﬁ culties propelled families on
a downward track. Stay-at-home mothers and single-earner fathers could not
escape a cycle of declining morale; dual-earning couples could not renegotiate
their division of responsibility; divorced parents could not ﬁ nd new ways to
share earning and caring; and neither mothers nor fathers were able to draw on
the help of others to meet children’s needs. These impasses and breakups left
children with far less to count on than they had once taken for granted.

When All Does Not End Well

When home life followed a downward slope, all did not end well. In contrast
to their peers with improving family fortunes, these children had no second
chances. They nevertheless searched for silver linings in their difﬁ cult experi-
ences, using the sense of trauma and loss to formulate ideas about how to live
a better life. Most agreed with Isaiah, who believed adversity can be “a good
teacher,” and Gabriel, who declared “you could say it was a good experience
’cause it taught me a lot.” They drew lessons from their parents’ missteps
about what not to do in their own lives.

silver linings

Living through family change, even unfortunate change, left most feeling
better prepared to face the challenges ahead of them. Although Noah felt
constricted growing up in “conformist suburbia,” his parents’ troubled mar-
riage gave him insights about how to live his own life differently:

We could have been pretty one-dimensional, but we’re real deep. I would
never say, “I’m glad this happened because now I’ve got deeper insight
into humankind,” but that just happened to be the way it turned out.

William, too, believed his parents’ breakup left him sympathetic to a

wider range of experiences and family situations:

As a kid, I had a pretty Beaver Cleaver type experience, and it was only
later it broke down. I think it’s given me a deeper, richer experience.
I can relate to somebody who comes from a nuclear family and to some-
body from a less traditional background. I feel more experienced.

Though few would have willingly chosen such a difﬁ cult path, most

felt stronger because they survived the bumps and bruises. Barbara and her
mother both learned self-reliance when her father left:

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

We had to learn how to depend on ourselves. It gave me a whole bat-
tery of skills very early in my life. At age ten, I got to ﬁ gure out how
you run the house, how you move into a new place. I’d probably still
be learning those skills.

Not wanting to be seen as victims or simple stereotypes, most used their

experiences as a motivation for doing better. Now a young manager at a large
corporation, Nina wanted to make her still struggling, single mother proud:

I see a silver lining, because looking at my sister and my brother and
me—we always had such high expectations for ourselves and we really
pushed to really do well. We were not going to become one of these
statistics; we had to make something of ourselves. It helped prove a
point to my father that “we didn’t really need you, and we did this
because mother helped us do it all.”

cautionary tales

Whether they represent social disadvantages, parental failings, or simply bad
luck, family difﬁ culties offered cautionary tales. Children view used their
parents’ missteps as a guide to avoid the same traps. As Jennifer put it, “It’s
about all the bad stuff, what not to do.” Men and women both drew lessons
about the perils of clinging to strict breadwinning and caretaking boundar-
ies, but they viewed these lessons through the lens of gender. Men focused
on the burdens of sole breadwinning, while women worried more about the
dangers of domesticity and the difﬁ culties of doing it all.

Sons hoped to avoid the fate of fathers who chafed under the pressure to

keep food on their families’ table. Though Noah’s father was a successful law-
yer, this model of conventional manhood appeared too costly and insincere:

Even though he was working hard, he wasn’t enjoying it. And he
always seemed to be thinking about something else. I never said “Oh,
my dad’s pretending to be a father,” but looking back on it, I knew he
wasn’t genuine. You’ve got to be true to yourself.

Eduardo sympathized with his father’s struggles to support the family on

a janitor’s earnings, but he also had little desire to follow in his footsteps:

My father’s been through a lot. He’s worked all his lifetime. If there
comes a time for me to get married, it’s gonna be way different, way
better. It’s gonna have to be ﬁ fty-ﬁ fty so I won’t have to worry about
working all the time and have nothing to show for it.

d o m e s t i c d e a d l o c k s a n d d e c l i n i n g f o r t u n e s

Men also vowed to reject the example of fathers who abandoned their

families. Lucius used his father’s decline into drug addiction as a spur to work
hard and postpone parenthood:

It just made me more serious and know what to avoid. I’m gonna ﬁ n-
ish school, be a successful man. I’m not gonna settle for less than that.
I’m gonna reach for the stars.

Luis drew on his father’s example by pledging to give his children what

he had not received:

Anybody can be a better father [than my father]. I think I’ll be better
because of what happened. Because I experienced it, and I know what
not to do.

Unhappy breadwinners and deadbeat single fathers represent two

extremes, but both left sons searching for a more balanced, rewarding, and
responsible alternative. Women drew similar lessons about their mothers.
Neither frustrated married mothers nor vulnerable single mothers offered
their daughters appealing options. Rosa was determined to chart a different
course than her home-centered mother:

You’re supposed to follow in your parents’ footsteps, but I don’t want
to be in my mother’s situation, and I don’t want a husband like my
father. My mom says she’s weaker than I am, that I have more will-
power. So I’m more positive. I want to have a career and keep my own
money. I don’t want to depend on a man.

Patricia also planned to pursue a career, but she rejected her mother’s

willingness to work full-time “without any help” at home:

I’m just happy that I’ve come out of it enough to see that’s not what
I want. I’m going out with someone now, and I’m just thinking, “I
will not let this happen.”

Women from all types of families focused on the perils of looking to some-

one else for personal happiness or economic security. As Jennifer explained,
they hope to protect themselves by rejecting strategies that left their mothers
at risk:

I learned not to get married early, ’cause the other person can still fall
out of love with you, can still cheat on you. All those bad things can
still happen. Just because you have that piece of paper, it’s a false secu-
rity. It doesn’t really promise you anything that can’t happen anyway.

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

Parents’ stumbles can provide vivid cautionary tales, but they do not offer

a road map for ﬁ nding a better way. Sarah had a clear sense that she does not
want her parents’ “traditional” marriage, but she is less conﬁ dent about how
to get what she does want:

In nontraditional families, people make more of what they want,
whereas [in] traditional families there’s a mold and it forces you into
it. I have a lot of conﬂ icts now, work versus home and all that stuff,
and having such a standard model hasn’t helped. But I want to be
independent and career-oriented, so I am.

Without a blueprint to follow, they hope to resist the pressures, overcome

the obstacles, and exert the control their parents lacked. Hoping is not the
same as doing, but at least, as Joel put it, they are aware of the pressures and
will face them squarely:

I can’t see things from my father’s point of view. He doesn’t want to
face the mistakes that he made. He’s in a situation he doesn’t like, and
his way of dealing with it is not facing it.

There but for Fortune

As they grow to adulthood, contemporary children are likely to encounter
unavoidable and unpredictable family change. While some young women and
men experienced turning points from early difﬁ culties toward more prom-
ising destinations, others lived through a cascading series of destabilizing
events that shattered an earlier sense of security. Yet pathways of both expand-
ing and eroding support unfolded in all family contexts, whether they began
as a homemaker-breadwinner, two-earner, or single-parent home. The type of
challenge may differ by class and household type, but all families face some
kind of risk as they go about the daily, monthly, and yearly tasks of rearing
children from infancy to adult independence. Over the course of this two-
decade journey, family life develops in unforeseen ways. Growing up amid
deep-seated work and family change, young women and men saw their fami-
lies undergo too many twists and turns to view them as snapshots frozen in
time. Instead, like a ﬁ lm whose ending cannot be known at the outset, their
families traveled unfolding pathways, where fortunes sometimes improved
and sometimes eroded.

What explains why some families prevailed and others did not? While

it may be tempting to attribute the course of divergent family paths to the
idiosyncratic strengths or shortcomings of individual parents, they actually

d o m e s t i c d e a d l o c k s a n d d e c l i n i n g f o r t u n e s

reﬂ ect how a mix of expanding opportunities and new insecurities shape the
social contexts confronting parents and other caretakers. As marriages have
become more voluntary, parents have new options to demand change or to
leave. These second chances in relationships can prompt some households to
change for the better and others to suffer painful losses. Similarly, the rising
ﬂ uidity of jobs and careers expands opportunities for some but imposes new
insecurities on others. And while the gender revolution makes it possible
to achieve a more egalitarian balance between home and work, demanding
workplaces and lagging child care supports leave many parents overwhelmed
and stressed on both fronts. In all of these ways, social shifts have created both
new opportunities for gender ﬂ exibility and new conﬂ icts between breadwin-
ning and caretaking.

These shifts also make ﬂ exibility in paid work and care work not only

desirable but essential. The erosion of single-earner paychecks, the rising
expectations for modern marriages, and the expanding options for and pres-
sures on working women all require partners to invent new ways of combin-
ing caretaking and breadwinning. In this irrevocably changed social context,
ﬂ exible approaches to work and parenting help all types of families overcome
economic uncertainties and interpersonal tensions. On the other hand, inﬂ ex-
ibility in the face of new social realities leaves all sorts of families ill prepared
to cope.

The direction of a family’s pathway reﬂ ects how well—or poorly—parents

and other caretakers were able to develop ﬂ exible gender strategies to cope
with unexpected but increasingly pervasive changes in relationships, jobs,
and child rearing. By creating more harmonious and egalitarian bonds, a
more satisfying balance between work and home, or an expanded network of
care, parents and other caretakers enhanced a child’s sense of support. When
caretakers held onto ﬁ xed gender arrangements that no longer provided per-
sonal satisfaction, marital cohesion, or sufﬁ cient economic resources, a child’s
support eroded.

Recognizing that family life is a process, not a static structure, also draws

attention to the social contexts that help some families do well and leave
others vulnerable. Parents with job opportunities and child care supports
were better able to develop the ﬂ exible gender strategies that helped them
cope. Building on these lessons, young women and men from all family back-
grounds are searching for new, more ﬂ exible ways to combine love and work.
But mindful of the obstacles that block this path, they are also preparing for
a bumpy journey with no preordained destination.

c h a p t e r f i v e

High Hopes, Lurking Fears

he children of the gender revolution face the same fateful choices
as previous generations, but they must grapple with new circumstances

their parents could scarcely perceive. Since marriage has become just one
among many options, they must decide not only what kind of lasting inti-
mate bond to create but whether they want one at all. Since work and family
life both demand more time, they must decide how to balance earning a liv-
ing with caring for others. And since gender boundaries are no longer clear,
they must decide how to apportion work and family tasks. No matter what
the lessons of childhood may have been, contemporary young women and
men have entered uncharted territory.

Amid these uncertainties, two opposing perspectives have emerged

about how young people will negotiate the future. One view sees family
decline and worries that the prevalence of single parents and working moth-
ers creates self-absorbed individualists wary of commitment and disinclined
to sacriﬁ ce for others. Neoconservatives concerned about family decline
share this perspective with more liberal “communitarians,” who are also
concerned that modern America suffers from rising individualism and a
decline of community that is draining civic participation and social cohe-
sion.

Another view, in contrast, sees a stalled movement toward women’s

rights and a return to traditional families anchored by a new generation of
stay-at-home mothers. From this perspective, the young women who were
reared in harried, time-deprived homes are giving up on trying to “do it all”
and choosing to “opt out.”

A small kernel of truth exists in both of these apparently contradictory visions

of the future. Young adults are increasingly likely to postpone marriage, live

104

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

alone, cohabit, and enter temporary partnerships. Indeed, they are more likely
than earlier generations to see living independently and supporting oneself,
rather than getting married and having children, as the most salient markers
of adulthood.

Their growing inclination to postpone marriage to focus ﬁ rst

on establishing independent lives, combined with their stress on the quality
of a relationship, suggests that permanent marriage is not likely to return as
the only acceptable—or even the most prevalent—option.

Yet the recent, albeit slight, decline among employed married moth-

ers also points to a halt—and potential reversal—in women’s long emerg-
ing movement into the workplace. Inﬂ exible jobs, a dearth of child care,
and resistant partners continue to place roadblocks on the path to blending
motherhood with a time-demanding career.

While each of these views seems to signal bad news, my interviewees sug-

gest that concerns about declining values and low aspirations are exaggerated
on both sides. Images of young adults as either self-absorbed individualists
or backward-looking traditionalists are too one-dimensional to capture the
hopes and plans of a generation facing such multifaceted and contradictory
options and cultural messages. Most strongly hope to create a lasting relation-
ship and to balance home and work. Whether reared in a single-parent, dual-
earner, or more traditional home, the vast majority want a permanent bond,
but they do not wish for that bond to be deﬁ ned by rigid gender distinctions.
Instead, they seek a third path that combines aspects of the past, such as
respect for lifelong commitment to an intimate partner, with arrangements
that better ﬁ t modern contingencies, such as ﬂ exibility and gender equality.
They want to create enduring and egalitarian partnerships that allow them to
strike a personal balance between earning and caregiving.

Aspirations, however, provide only half the story. The roadblocks young

women and men will likely face lead them to soberly assess their options.
Amid time-demanding workplaces, pressures to parent intensively, and ris-
ing standards for a fulﬁ lling relationship, they harbor considerable doubts
about the chances of achieving their ideals. Aware of these obstacles, they
know they must prepare to cope with less-than-ideal realities and to pursue
“second-best” options that will help them survive in an imperfect world. In
fashioning these fallback strategies, women and men alike must weigh their
highest hopes against their greatest fears.

The gender revolution has nourished a multifaceted set of ideals and fears.

It is often easier to hold values than to live up to them, and young adults
face a gap between what they want and what they think they can actually
get. This conﬂ ict produces enacted compromises between ideals and real-
world options. The higher rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock pregnancy in

h i g h h o p e s , l u r k i n g f e a r s

105

the “red states,” where so-called values voters predominate, provides a vivid
example of this process. It is thus necessary to distinguish between aspira-
tions and practices, taking both seriously but never assuming they are the
same.

Although young women and men share the ideals of lasting commitment,

gender ﬂ exibility, and work-family balance, they harbor some different fears
about what might happen if these aspirations remain beyond their grasp.
Women stress the dangers of depending on someone else for their identity
or ﬁ nancial well-being; men focus on the costs of failing at work. These con-
trasting concerns point toward a gender divide lurking beneath the surface of
shared ideals. They pit “self-reliant” women, who see personal autonomy as
essential for their survival, against “neotraditional” men, who see work suc-
cess as a key to self-respect.

Different Experiences, Similar Ideals

Young women and men face three intertwined questions about their futures.
Do they wish to create a permanent bond with one intimate partner or retain
the option to switch partners or remain on their own? What kind of balance
would they like to strike between paid work and family life? And how would
they like to share the challenges of earning a living and rearing children with
a partner or others? Taken together, the answers coalesce into three distinct
outlooks. A self-reliant outlook stresses the importance of personal indepen-
dence, even if that means forgoing a lifelong partner. A traditional outlook
stresses permanent marriage and clearly deﬁ ned gender boundaries. And an
egalitarian outlook stresses lasting commitment and combines it with a pref-
erence for balancing and sharing work and family tasks.

Each of these outlooks represents an ideal type, but they do not reﬂ ect

equally desirable options.

While public debate has focused on the growth of

self-reliant and traditional outlooks, most of my informants do not aspire to
either of these options. Indeed, as Figure 5.1 shows, only 5 percent of women
or men see self-reliance as an ideal option. Almost everyone wishes to create
an enduring intimate partnership, though there is less agreement about what
form this bond should take. Fewer than 30 percent of the men want a rela-
tionship with strict gender boundaries, and only about 15 percent of women
do. Overall, the traditional and self-reliant groups together remain a minority.
Four out of ﬁ ve women and almost seven out of ten men prefer a committed
but egalitarian relationship with ﬂ exible gender boundaries that allow both
partners to balance family and work rather than specialize in one or the other.

106

t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

In addition to these small gender differences, family background has only

a weak link to current ideals. Despite worries about neglected children and
time-stressed homes, three-quarters of those who grew up with two working
parents hope to share work and parenting with their partners. Concerns that
children from divorced and single-parent families will eschew marriage seem
overblown, since close to nine out of ten of them hope to get married, stay
married, and share work and caretaking. Perhaps most surprising, almost
seven out of ten people reared in traditional homes want egalitarian partner-
ships for themselves. Finally, children from all class and ethnic backgrounds
also generally share egalitarian ideals, as Figure 5.2 shows. Middle-class
children are only slightly more likely to favor equality at home and work,
and African- Americans only slightly more likely than others.

Of course, “equality” is a vague and elusive concept, whose centrality as

an ideal often clashes with the difﬁ culty of achieving or even measuring it
in practice. For my interviewees, “egalitarian” does not mean a rigidly orga-
nized division of everything all the time. It refers instead to a long-term

Traditional

family

Women

Men

Dual-earner

family

Single-parent

family

Egalitarian

Neotraditional

Self-reliant

f i g u r e 5 . 1 Work and family ideals, by gender and parents’ family destination.

h i g h h o p e s , l u r k i n g f e a r s

107

commitment to equitable, ﬂ exible, and mutual support in domestic tasks
and workplace ties.

Deﬁ ned this way, the majority of children from all

kinds of families hope to ﬁ nd a lifelong partner, to balance work and fam-
ily, and to share breadwinning and caretaking. Their diverse experiences
with parents, friends, and other adults and peers led most to this shared
conclusion.

seeking a lifelong commitment

The overwhelming majority of young adults hope to forge a lifelong com-
mitment with a single partner. In fact, a recent survey found that “even
though a decreasing percentage of the adult population is married, most
unmarried adults say they want to marry.”

For most, this means get-

ting and staying married, but everyone who identiﬁ ed as gay or lesbian
also hoped to create a “marriage-like” relationship.

Children with happily

married parents hope for this outcome, but so do children with parents
who were dissatisﬁ ed together, divorced, or never married. Serena’s par-
ents’ egalitarian partnership provided a template for friendships as well as
intimate bonds:

African-

American

Latino,

Latina

Middle &

upper

middle

class

Asian

White

Working

class &

poor

Egalitarian

Neotraditional

Self-reliant

f i g u r e 5 . 2 Work and family ideals, by class and ethnic background.

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My peers saw shouting matches, [but] I never experienced any of that.
It taught me to not throw in the towel with a friend or a guy. It
taught me that if it’s worth your being there, it’s worth your going
through disagreements. It’s actually a role model for how I treat my
relationships.

Even those who lived with unhappily married parents seek a long-term

commitment. Troubled marriages provide clues about what missteps to avoid
in a relationship, but they do not necessarily lead children to reject marriage
altogether. Reﬂ ecting on his parents’ emotional estrangement, Jermaine
hoped to create a closer bond:

I hope [my marriage] would be different—different in the sense that
I’m an affectionate guy. My father was never that type of person.

Divorces also provide lessons about what to avoid. Like a photograph’s

negative, Jasmine vowed to create the unbreakable bond that had eluded her
parents. She preferred to afﬁ rm the values her parents stressed rather than the
choices they made:

I really want “till death do you part” . . . Just take what they did and
ﬂ ip it around, the opposite. The only thing I wouldn’t change [is]
what they instilled in me. What they did really didn’t inﬂ uence me as
much as what they told me to do.

The experience of divorce can actually strengthen the desire to marry and stay

married. Contrary to the view that the children of divorce want to avoid com-
mitment, most of my interviewees responded to watching their parents break
up by developing an appreciation for making marriage work. Alex’s father’s
departure helped him realize how much he valued binding commitment:

I don’t think that it was good that he left, but in some ways it could
have been good for me. It deﬁ nitely makes things harder, but I also
feel strongly that it taught me that family is important, and I think
that is because I’ve seen it from the other side.

In a similar way, William viewed his father’s affair with a younger woman

as a valuable lesson about how to prevent a “schizophrenic life”:

I’m not going to do a freak-out like my dad. Now he’s living out his
adolescence with this younger woman.

Parents’ troubled marriages also prompted children to search for more

uplifting models. Some compared a failed ﬁ rst marriage to a more successful

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second one. The remarriage of Tamika’s father provided an antidote to the
prior conﬂ ict and tension:

The ideal family would be my father and my stepmother. They don’t
let little arguments come between them. They took care of their kids.
It is the opposite of my mother. I want my kids raised by both parents
all the time.

More often, however, the children of unhappily married parents found

inspiration from others in their social network who made long-lasting, satis-
fying relationships seem possible. Determined to avoid her own parents’ fate,
watching her boyfriend’s parents changed Hannah’s outlook:

My ﬁ rst boyfriend’s parents were so reasonable, so calm, and so
human to each other. It was such a contrast to the way my par-
ents existed that I made them into some sort of ideal couple, and
I recognized that as the way I want to interact with someone I was
married to.

Catherine also looked to other families and ultimately discovered that her

own relationships did not have to follow the course of her parents’ conten-
tious marriage and subsequent divorce:

As far as commitment goes, I’ve learned that it’s very satisfying to
work together with somebody, and even when you’re struggling,
the outcome can be great if you’re both working on this. It’s such a
good sense of accomplishment that you’re giving a part of yourself
to somebody who appreciates it, especially when you get that back
in return.

In short, young people with all kinds of family experiences hope to marry

and stay married—or, especially in the case of gays and lesbians, create a
lasting partnership. Some parents provided models to emulate, but even
when they did not, children did not turn away from the ideal of commit-
ment. Instead, they used these shortfalls as examples of mistakes to avoid
and looked to others for inspiration.

Very few concluded it would be more

appealing to go it alone, depend exclusively on a network of close friends, or
move endlessly through a series of temporary partnerships.

Not content with just a commitment, those who hope to marry also set

high standards for the ideal relationship. In addition to looking for the best
context to bear and rear children, they seek commitments that offer intimacy,
support, and lasting romantic attachment. While Dwayne’s parents did not
achieve these ideals, he still sought them for himself:

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It’s a bond that can’t be broken. Once you make it, that’s it. So I want
to be able to say in twenty-ﬁ ve years, “I love you more than the day
I met you. Would you spend the next twenty-ﬁ ve years with me?”
That’s something my parents didn’t do.

Jonathan believed his parents came close to the ideal he sought, which left

him even more determined to settle for nothing less:

I see my parents together, and I couldn’t imagine getting married just
’cause you think, “If you get divorced, that’s okay.” I’m very much like,
“The right one’s out there.” I’m fortunate for the way I was brought
up, and I’d like to be able to have that.

While almost everybody values permanent commitment, it is not the

only value that matters. In a world where remaining single or getting a
divorce are abiding, if less appealing, options, the quality of a relation-
ship matters as much as being in one. The desire for lasting love, rooted
in mutual respect, support, and romance, has not diminished the desire to
marry, but there is little reason to hurry.

Making a bad choice can be worse

than not making any at all, especially with such high standards and fateful
consequences. Bruce pointed out, “There are many people who I’ve seen
crushed by either a bad marriage or not [being] married, so I have to make
sure it’s right.”

seeking a personal balance

Most women and men also hope to strike a relatively equal balance between
paid work and the rest of life. Younger workers are more likely than members
of the boomer generation to be family-centric or dual-centric (that is, to place
their priorities on both career and family) rather than work-centric.

A few

wish to follow in their parents’ footsteps, but most want something better.
Those raised in traditional homes generally seek to avoid the extremes of
their parents. Suzanne believed her mother’s domesticity had been unneces-
sary and counterproductive, prompting her to look for something more:

It just seems kind of unnatural to just stay home with kids. Work and
child rearing would be of equal importance.

Rachel agreed:

Life is too short, and it shouldn’t have to revolve around a household. I
know I wouldn’t want to do that. I’d feel trapped just being in a house
all the time.

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Ken wished to avoid the opposite problem. By spending less time at

work, he hoped to ﬁ nd the balance that had eluded his father and left him
feeling shortchanged:

It represents me hoping to be less workaholic than my father. I want
to be more active in the early years. I want to have a huge role—the
overprotective father, and more caring towards my wife, too.

Joel concurred:

I guess you realize more what you don’t get. So the lack of attention
[from my dad] played more of an inﬂ uence in how I’d raise my child,
ideally.

Living in a single-parent home also triggered a desire for balance, espe-

cially among men whose fathers were largely absent. Richard wished for far
more than weekend parenting:

Because my father was a weekend dad, I have to set a better example.
I would like to be more like my mother and be very involved with the
kids. Extremely, I want to be there. My father would be like, “That’s
terrible,” but I think it’s a much healthier way to live than to do the
same thing every day for the rest of your life.

Hank remained angry and bafﬂ ed by his father’s desertion, but he hoped

to emulate his grandfather’s involvement:

[An] ideal father [is] somebody who’s willing to spend time with kids,
to counsel, to teach as well as to provide. Because my dad left, because
I experienced it, and I know what I don’t want to do, and just from
watching my grandfather, who did those things.

Dual-earner homes come closer to the ideal, but even these households

left most children hoping for a better balance. While they want to “do it
all,” they do not want the hectic daily schedules that often left both parents
having to do too much. Men are apt to focus on how work pressures crowded
out family time. Watching his working-class parents struggle in a series of
blue-collar and pink-collar jobs, Dwayne concluded that spending less time
at work was the key:

My parents wanted to spend more time [with us,] but their time was
compromised with the nine to ﬁ ve grind. I want to take my kids to a
park, to be able to call and [say] I’m taking my family on a vacation.

With parents who were busy therapists, Mark felt the same way:

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My parents worked so much. I don’t want to have that type of life.
I want to be less stressed. I want to have more relaxed work so that I can
be more relaxed at home. [My dad] would work nine to ﬁ ve at the hos-
pital and do private practice in the evenings, so he was never home.

Women, in contrast, focus more on doing better at work. Kristen knew

she could manage both, but hoped to escape the toll that home duties took
on her mother’s chances of moving out of the secretarial ranks:

My mom could handle family and work, and she did both well. She
did a great job of raising me. But work, she could have done better.
I want to do better in my work.

Isabella’s mother became her model as she moved up the ladder to become

an executive at a bank:

Like my mom, having children and having a successful career—a
happy career—are both things that I want. So if I have one and not the
other, I’m going to feel like I’m missing out on something.

While women and men alike want to avoid spending too much time at

work or at home, the lens of gender slants their views in different directions.
Women hope family obligations will not undermine their work prospects,
while men hope work obligations will not unduly interfere with family time.
Most, however, share the wish for a more equitable balance than their parents
were able to achieve.

seeking an egalitarian partnership

A lasting commitment and a personal balance between work and family both
require ﬁ nding a partner with similar goals, and most seek such a relation-
ship. Although women in particular desire equality, most men agree. In fact,
a recent survey found “sharing household chores” now ranks third in impor-
tance on a list of items generally associated with successful marriages (with
62 percent saying sharing housework is very important to marital success,
compared to 47 percent ﬁ fteen years ago), well ahead of adequate income
(53 percent) and even having children (41 percent). Equally important, there
are no signiﬁ cant differences in the views of men and women, whether single
or married.

Young adults are especially likely to endorse this view. Another

survey thus found that two-thirds of people under thirty-two strongly sup-
port gender equality at work and in the home, and 90 percent feel closer to
that position than to the view that women’s place is in the home.

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Those from traditional homes hope to overcome the boundaries of gen-

der emphasized by their parents. Women want a partner who will do far
more parenting and housekeeping than their fathers, while men ﬁ nd a work-
committed partner more appealing than their mothers’ domesticity. Melissa
contrasted her preferences with those of her parents:

[My ideal] is kind of opposite. I never wanted to be my mom. Wouldn’t
it be great if it were as ﬁ fty-ﬁ fty as it could be? You each get to see how
difﬁ cult everything is. Nobody would go unappreciated.

Jonathan reached the same conclusion about his father:

I deﬁ nitely don’t want what my father did. He wanted the traditional
thing. I actually ﬁ nd it more exciting to meet a woman who has a
career, a direction. Maybe deep down inside it’s because my mom
didn’t, so I’m looking for someone who does.

Those reared by single parents drew more complex lessons. Watching one

parent—usually a mother—struggle to care for her children and make ends
meet made equal sharing seem a far better alternative. But these children also
take solace from their parents’ displays of strength in the face of adversity.
Alex explained:

From living with my mother, I was exposed to people who are strong.
That attracted me. So I would like to have an equal relationship.

In a case of “actions speak louder than words,” Keisha found her custodial

grandmother’s autonomy contradicted the words she spoke:

My grandmother’s like, “He’s the man; he should give you money; he
should support you.” It’s weird, but she does say that. But I want ﬁ fty-
ﬁ fty, ’cause I think we’re equal, we should help each other.

Dual-earner homes appeared, in Rosanna Hertz’s words, “more equal than

others,” and some provided models of equitable, ﬂ exible, and fair sharing.

Mariela took inspiration from her father’s relationship with her stepmother:

[My ideal’s] the same thing. If I’m cooking, he can wash the dishes,
and when the kids are there, he can do the homework, and I’ll get
them ready for bed. We would share ﬁ fty-ﬁ fty.

Mark shared this judgment:

My dad and my stepmother function well as a couple. He cooks; she
cooks. If a woman feels comfortable being a housewife, I don’t see the

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problem, but in terms of having a wife like that, that seems like a lot
of pressure on me. I’d rather have a more equal partner.

Even in the best circumstances, however, people are careful to distinguish

between what they wish to emulate and avoid in their parents’ marriages.
Women, especially, want to evade a disproportionate share of the housework.
Michelle, for example, did not doubt she would follow her mother’s path
toward a career, but she hoped for a much more supportive partner than her
father had been:

I’d like to be like my mother, deﬁ nitely not staying at home, but
I want both parents to be equally involved in the kids’ lives and main-
taining the house. So I put a lot of responsibility on the father. The
main quality I look for in a guy is being very willing to compromise
and not be rigid, because that’s what happened with my dad. You can’t
communicate with someone who is just unwilling to see your point
of view.

Men and women view equality in different ways. Women are eager to ﬁ nd

a partner to share caretaking, while men look forward to sharing the ﬁ nancial
load. Yet the desire to transcend gender boundaries provides a common ele-
ment to these aspirations. As William said of his mother and father:

I was very proud of my mom for being so successful in banking, a
pretty patriarchal industry. And my dad always did the cooking.
Certainly, it gave me a strong sense of traditional masculine-feminine
roles being bunk.

the minority view

Though most wish to create a ﬂ exible, egalitarian relationship, a noteworthy
minority hold outlooks harkening back to an earlier era. Close to a third of
men and about 15 percent of women prefer to maintain clear gender bound-
aries between earning and caring, although here, too, their views do not
directly reﬂ ect family background. Some are eager to follow in their parents’
footsteps, while others hope to avoid the difﬁ culties of living in less tradi-
tional homes. Traditionally inclined men want to retain the option to fully
commit to work. With a father who did well as a self-employed home inspec-
tor, Sam saw his parents’ strict division of labor as the only ideal:

Ideally, like my parents, have my wife take care of the kids and me
going out working, bringing home the money. Wrong is someone who

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wouldn’t care for the kids as much, wouldn’t be there, who would
expect me to come home from work to a ﬁ lthy house and me do all the
housework, something like that.

David, whose dad was a lawyer, agreed:

I am working my ass off. My father was very ambitious and cared a lot
about being hugely successful, and I have the same thing.

Though fewer women hold traditional ideals, those who do also stress the

beneﬁ ts of a breadwinning man. After watching her mother struggle to sup-
port her family, Keisha wanted a partner who would bring home the bacon
so that she could cook it:

Actually, with children, I think a man should do more than half the
breadwinning. Because that’s not the way I was raised, maybe that’s
why I think it’s about due time somebody does it.

While homemaking mothers and breadwinning fathers may seem ideal to

this group, they do not entirely reject the changes taking place around them.
Women can hold paid jobs, they argue, and men should be involved fam-
ily members, but only if these activities do not interfere with their primary
obligations. For Hank, it is ﬁ ne for women to work, but not for a mother to
have a career:

I want someone who’s willing to work, but not somebody who’s more
concerned about their career than their own kids’ well-being, not
somebody saying, “I could be so much more successful,” when they
sacriﬁ ce my children. Once there’s kids, you’re gonna be a mother—
not a housewife, a mother.

Tiffany wants a partner who will help with child care, but also provide

the bulk of the income:

I would like to be the primary caretaker, but I expect a lot from some-
one else. I want someone who supports us but also is thrilled to be
with them and where that’s a priority.

Mindful of the decline in 1950s-style families, even those with traditional

ideals want to soften the edges of gender divisions. As Annie explained, com-
plete domesticity brings too many dangers:

The ideal? Stay home. I’d like to raise my kids, and I’d like my hus-
band to make enough money to be comfortable. But for your own
mental sanity, I don’t think it’s healthy if you have a husband who’s

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making all the money. So it involves a partner who’s willing to carry
his own weight and balance career with home.

If Wishes Were Horses, Beggars Would Ride

While a small minority of women and a larger minority of men would like to
recapture the mid-twentieth-century world of Ozzie and Harriet, most hope
to forge a different path through adulthood. Neither unbridled individualists
nor nostalgic traditionalists, they seek a lifelong partner who will join them
in integrating satisfying work with ample family time. This is not a selﬁ sh
wish to have it all, but rather a shared desire for the best of both worlds.

If young people could count on achieving their ideals, the future would be

easy to predict. But the terrain of twenty-ﬁ rst-century adulthood is far too uncer-
tain for that. In the words of Frank Furstenberg and his colleagues, “growing up
is harder to do.”

Watching their parents’ generation cope with marital uncer-

tainty and work-family conﬂ ict has left them with doubts about ﬁ nding the
right partner and achieving economic security. Amid their own rising standards
for personal fulﬁ llment, they perceive a widening gap between their aspirations
for equality and work-family balance and their ability to achieve them.

Their

highest ideals are tempered with a heavy—and realistic—dose of skepticism.

uncertainty in relationships

The tension between increasingly fragile relationships and rising stan-
dards for a partner leaves young people wondering whether they can ﬁ nd
the right person or create a lasting bond if they do. Although divorce rates
have stabilized and even declined slightly, they remain in the range of 40 to
50 percent of marriages.

The rise of cohabitation has also changed the

demographic landscape, since many cohabiting couples break up without
ever marrying, and about 70 percent of those who marry live together ﬁ rst.

The scope of these demographic shifts permeates young people’s world-

views. In a national survey of American youth between the ages of eigh-
teen and twenty-four, Anna Greenberg found that although most believe
in the ideal of marriage, they are far more skeptical about the institution of
marriage. Fifty-seven percent believe “the institution of marriage is dying
in this country,” while only 25 percent disagree, and those reared in tradi-
tional and nontraditional homes reached the same conclusion. Less than half
(45 percent) disagree with the statement, “You see so few happy marriages
today that you begin to question it as a way of life.”

The children of intact

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as well as divorced families have concluded that love does not necessarily con-
quer all. Even though his own parents stayed together, Paul knew the best of
intentions would not—and could not—guarantee permanence:

I hope I don’t have to go through a divorce, but this is very unrealistic
to say. Divorce shouldn’t happen; you should marry somebody and
make sure it’s right the ﬁ rst time and make it work. It’s easy to say
that, but who knows what’s gonna happen down the road.

Concern about the impermanence of relationships also fuels a focus on

ﬁ nding the right partner rather than just ﬁ nding one. Now that commitment
is both optional and unpredictable, the quality of a relationship takes center
stage. In fact, a full 70 percent of eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds believe
the main purpose of marriage is “mutual happiness and fulﬁ llment.”

In this

sense, as Stephanie Coontz observes, love has “conquered” marriage.

Jeff

feared being alone, but not as much as he feared being in a relationship that
left him feeling alone:

I need love. I need intimacy. But I couldn’t really set a goal saying,
“I need to be married by this time,” because you do that to yourself
and all of a sudden you’re marrying somebody you’re not going to be
happy with.

Even those raised by happily married parents are unsure about ﬁ nding

a suitable partner. Reﬂ ecting on her dual-earning parents’ egalitarian give-
and-take, Kayla worried that they set the bar too high for her to reach:

I just love to introduce my parents to people because I feel that peo-
ple have a greater sense of respect for who I am through my parents,
because I always hear positive things. If I didn’t have that, if I had
someone who didn’t meet my standard, it would be hard.

While women and men agree it is difﬁ cult to ﬁ nd the right partner or sus-

tain a worthwhile relationship, men worry that women will expect too much
of them and women wonder if marriage will threaten their quest for personal
autonomy. Hank felt that the rising tide of “modern women” who want to
retain “control” would reduce the pool of acceptable partners:

A lot of women just hate men and have no respect for them. I don’t
know if it’s because their fathers abused their mothers or they just
thought their mothers were worth more, but there are so many women
that just want to be in control, and they’re probably better off by
themselves.

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Although Serena expressed no lack of respect for men, she did not want to

build a relationship at the cost of giving up a separate self:

It’s not just equality; it’s about being your own person. And it’s hard
to see how you can keep your independence and have a relationship.
It’s difﬁ cult.

Despite the popular images of domestically oriented women and independent-

minded men, these reﬂ ections suggest young women are actually more fearful of
traditional marriage.

Concern about the pitfalls of relationships mingles with

anxiety about the fragility of intimate bonds, leaving everyone to wonder if it is
possible to build a lasting relationship that is also fulﬁ lling. As Serena put it:

I want an equal partner, but I’m also confused because I ﬁ nd a lot of
my male peers think the woman’s inferior in the relationship. Or I ﬁ nd
a lot of guys are intimidated by someone being educated and being
able to pull their own weight. And it makes me wonder if I will ﬁ nd
someone compatible that I also am attracted to.

In this bewildering context, ﬁ nding the right match and sustaining this

bond seems like ﬁ nding the proverbial needle in a haystack. The under-
standable response is to postpone marriage, leaving almost three-quarters of
twenty-something men and almost two-thirds of twenty-something women
still single.

workplace pressures

The workplace is a “greedy institution,” which has only grown greedier
since Louis and Rose Coser coined this term over three decades ago.

While occupational success has long been tied to full-time, uninter-
rupted commitment, the deﬁ nition of “full-time” has grown to include
workweeks extending well beyond the once standard forty hours to ﬁ fty,
sixty, seventy, and even eighty hours.

Whether or not they watched

their own parents struggle to ﬁ nd family time, most worry that rising
work demands put any semblance of balance beyond their reach.

While

Nina grew up with a stay-at-home single mother, she feared that the
relentless time pressures at work would make it impossible for her to stay
sane while moving up:

People [who] strive to be VPs, I see what they go through. Literally, it
feels like twenty-four hours is not enough in a day. You’re in at 7:30
in the morning, and it’s back-to-back meetings all day. You don’t have

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time to run to the ladies’ room. Sometimes you don’t even eat lunch.
And you work at home on the weekend.

Even though Mariela’s father and stepmother did a good job of juggling

two jobs, she still worried about the demands on today’s workers:

These people where I work, sometimes they don’t leave until eleven
o’clock at night. And they have families of their own. That’s what
I don’t want.

New uncertainties abound for young workers of all stripes in the chang-

ing American workplace. Lower-paying, nonunion service jobs have replaced
the blue-collar jobs that once promised job security and a living wage for
the less educated. Even middle-class professionals with advanced degrees
and generous paychecks face more ﬂ uid and unpredictable job ladders. As a
result, men are anxious about the demise of the secure, well-paying jobs their
fathers counted on.

Manny wondered how—or if—he could re-create his

father’s success as a construction worker and the family breadwinner:

I always looked at my father taking care of his wife and children and
felt it was my responsibility completely. My wife is the mother of my
child and my responsibility. My job is to make money. But you have to
worry about it. My thought right now is playing Lotto.

Though Adam’s father brought home more money as a physician, he had

the same concern:

My biggest fear is that I won’t be as successful as my father. That’s always
in the back of my head, which may sound selﬁ sh but it makes it tough.

Some believe declining economic security is contributing to rising job

pressures. Concerned about downsizing and retrenchment, Noah felt the
need to concentrate on ﬁ nding and keeping a good job rather than being an
involved, attentive parent:

In terms of my values and goals, I would want to experience my chil-
dren’s childhood. But pursuing a career and raising a family at the
same time are tough because a lot of places today, especially in busi-
ness, want you to work weekends and around the clock, even though
I really don’t want to do that.

Women and men both see rising time pressures and economic insecuri-

ties as signiﬁ cant obstacles to balancing family involvement with a sustained
career. More than ever, workplaces are greedy organizations with scant room

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for other loyalties. Andrew concluded he had little chance of achieving his
“ideal balance”:

It would be best to make them both ﬁ rst priorities, although I’m not
sure if that would be possible. It would be nice if they were all per-
fectly compatible, but I think if you have a career, then you generally
have to maintain it.

Greg echoed these sentiments:

I’d say the chances are very ﬁ fty-ﬁ fty, very “possibly yes” and “possibly
no.” Work situations are not very accepting of people who want to put
kids in an equal priority with their job. Maybe I’m just not in a work
environment that can accommodate kids.

parenting pressures

The high demands of modern parenting also leave young people skeptical
about achieving balance in their lives or equality in their relationships. In
addition to expanding workweeks, young Americans also face rising stan-
dards of parenthood. Although some argue this trend is largely conﬁ ned
to the middle class, the working-class women and men I interviewed are
just as likely to believe that children are better off having a parent at home,
especially if they lack the resources to purchase high-quality child care.

Although the overwhelming majority support mothers’ employment, most
also remain convinced that children fare better when at least one parent is
devoted to their care. Todd declared, “I don’t want a nanny raising my child;
I want my wife and myself to raise my child.”

Though men and women agree on the problem, they have reached differ-

ent conclusions about the solutions. Egalitarian language notwithstanding,
men more often argue that women should bear the ﬁ rst responsibility for
caretaking. Matthew argued that the ideal of equality conﬂ icted with his own
and his children’s best interests:

Financials aside, it’s probably better for the children if the mother
doesn’t work. That’s ignoring her interests and desires, too—just
purely for the children.

And Adam worried that neither he nor his partner could have their cake

and eat it too:

I would like to share, and far be it for me to tell her not to work. But
if we have a child, I don’t know how I’d feel. I couldn’t expect her to

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give up her job, especially if it was important to her, but I wouldn’t
want to quit my job, so that’s something I’d have to cross when the
time comes.

Women more often feel caught between caring for children and bringing

home a paycheck. Mothers continue to face pressure to be at home with their
children even as they also face pressure to bring home an income. Brianna
acknowledged her own view probably had more to do with social norms than
a child’s inherent needs:

Because society’s created a place where mom is the one who’s supposed
to have the cookies when you come home from school, it’s probably
better when she stays home. But that’s because of society.

These pressures heighten women’s inner conﬂ icts, but do not dictate a

conforming response.

Often raised by working mothers, many are prepared

to resist this cultural standard. Reﬂ ecting on her mother’s example, Anita
felt torn, but also deﬁ ant:

I suppose women take a different role [than men] in the family, but
that obviously wasn’t my mother. You can have a career, but maybe
you can’t. This is the most scary thing. I want to be able to do this,
but really, I don’t know.

Gender differences aside, women and men agree that the conﬂ ict between

an “intensive parenting” standard, which requires the single-minded devo-
tion of one parent, and an “ideal worker” model, which requires undivided
commitment to a job, creates dilemmas for everyone. Karen concluded that
rising demands at work and at home make it difﬁ cult to ﬁ nd—or be—an
egalitarian partner:

Ideally, my husband would cook, split cleaning very evenly, deﬁ nitely
do more than my dad does. But now I understand what it’s like to
work all day and come home and do stuff. Now I see how it’s hard.

Beyond Ideals

Workplace pressures, rising standards for parenting, and a limited pool of
suitable mates creates skepticism about the chances of creating the lasting,
ﬂ exible partnerships most desire. In response, women and men both acknowl-
edge the need to prepare for real-world options that might—and probably
will—fall signiﬁ cantly short of their ideals. Their strategies for adulthood

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emerge not only from their high hopes for a committed, egalitarian relation-
ship and a balanced personal life but also from their realistic doubts about
attaining these aspirations.

Faced with social and cultural obstacles that make it difﬁ cult to achieve

equality and work-family balance, women and men seek protection against
the potentially dangerous contingencies they anticipate. What should take
the place of an enduring, egalitarian partnership if it proves elusive? Is it bet-
ter to return to a more traditional pattern or venture forth on a more indepen-
dent path? Everyone found a fallback plan not only attractive but necessary.

Yet since women and men perceive different dangers and envision different
worst-case scenarios, they also develop different insurance strategies. In con-
trast to the popular belief that younger generations of women want to return
home, Figure 5.3 shows that men, not women, are substantially more likely
to prefer to fall back on a breadwinner-homemaker arrangement.

Although some women are prepared to place marriage before all else,

almost three-fourths are not. They plan to pursue a strategy of self-reliance
instead. Hoping to avoid being stuck in an unhappy marriage or deserted by

Men’s fallback

position

Women’s ideals

Men’s ideals

Women’s

fallback position

Egalitarian

Neotraditional

Self-reliant

f i g u r e 5 . 3 Ideals and fallback positions of young women and men.

h i g h h o p e s , l u r k i n g f e a r s

123

an unfaithful spouse, these women see paid work as essential to their sur-
vival and to the well-being of any children they might bear. Women look
to self-reliance and personal autonomy, within and outside the boundaries of
marriage, to protect against economic dependence on a partner or personal
malaise in domesticity.

Men’s views reverse those of women. While a minority lean toward per-

sonal freedom, seven out of ten men favor a modiﬁ ed form of traditional-
ism if an egalitarian relationship proves unworkable or too costly. Worried
about time-greedy workplaces and convinced that work remains at the core
of manly success, they hope to avoid the sacriﬁ ces of equal sharing through a
neotraditional arrangement in which they can continue to place a high prior-
ity on work while their partner provides more of the caregiving.

Beneath the surface of shared values lies a new gender divide. The fragility

of modern relationships and the persistence of work-family conﬂ icts prompt
young women and men to craft not just different but conﬂ icting fallback
strategies. It is important to remember, however, that limited opportunities,
not suspect motivations, drive this division. Whether women stress the need
for self-reliance in a world of uncertain partnerships and devalued care work
or men ﬁ nd traditional gender divisions attractive in a world where family
involvement threatens work success, these strategies represent second-best
adjustments to a social order that nurtures high hopes but offers limited
chances for making them possible. And just as drivers and homeowners feel
safer knowing they have insurance, these fallback positions provide reassur-
ance even if they never prove necessary. Women’s and men’s contrasting sur-
vival strategies may portend a growing gender divide, but they do not reﬂ ect
deeper aspirations.

c h a p t e r s i x

Women’s Search for Self-Reliance

he fragility of modern relationships and the conﬂ icting pressures of
parenting and work leave young women with deep concerns. They know

a marriage license does not come with a lifetime guarantee, and they might
not be happy even if it did. Most want to be an attentive parent and a success-
ful worker, but fear it might be easier to win the lottery than to ﬁ nd both good
child care and a ﬂ exible job. Most want an egalitarian partnership, but ﬁ nding
a suitable, supportive companion hardly seems a foregone conclusion.

As they negotiate these uncertain waters, young women hope for the best, but

are determined to avoid the worst. In the face of persistent obstacles to gender
equality, about a quarter of the women I interviewed are prepared to stress the pri-
macy of marriage and motherhood, even if this means forgoing a career. But three
out of four seek a level of independence they cannot ﬁ nd in domesticity. Like a life-
boat in rough seas, strong workplace ties and a sphere of autonomy within their
intimate relationships offer the separate base they want and are convinced they
need. Even the minority inclined toward more traditional marital arrangements
hope to fashion a modiﬁ ed form of traditionalism with some tie to paid work.
Whether the fallback strategy focuses on self-reliance or domesticity, it represents
young women’s best efforts to cope with the obstacles to achieving their ideals.

If Not Equality, Then What?

Women from all backgrounds view the chances of “getting it all” as disap-
pointingly low. Despite their disparate backgrounds and personal circum-
stances, Anita, Lauren, and Monique all agreed. With the help of a minority

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125

fellowship, Anita managed to earn a college degree from a selective school
despite her modest economic background. Single at twenty-six and working
full-time as an administrator for a large academic organization, she realized it
would not be easy to ﬁ nd the perfect package of a good relationship, a satisfy-
ing career, and several children:

I’m asking for a lot. I’d say [the chances are] 10 to 20 percent, if that
good. I’m realizing that things are so impermanent and my expecta-
tions can only get me so far.

Also twenty-six, but married and employed at a public relations ﬁ rm,

Janet agreed that career and parenthood would be hard to combine:

God only knows. Fate and destiny have to intervene to save me at this
point. Can you arrange that?

A single mother at twenty-three, Monique faced the challenge of rearing

two young sons on her own. Living on public assistance and searching for
child care and a good job left her wondering how her earlier optimism had
evaporated so quickly:

I had very high hopes. I ﬁ gured I’d do the kids and the husband thing
and work on a career without stopping. But that didn’t work out.

Women are counterbalancing their high hopes with contingency plans.

Single at twenty-nine and working as a commodities broker, Maria found that
searching for a satisfying, secure life means keeping one eye on her dream of
combining a career with marriage and motherhood, while the other remains
focused on more practical matters:

I’m not pessimistic, but I’m realistic. As much as I would like to live
in utopia, a lot of it is chance. So you have to set up insurance policies
for yourself in life.

What form do these insurance policies take? If “having it all” is a matter

of chance—and possibly a low chance at that—what options remain? For
Letitia, her generation has more options than their mothers and grandmoth-
ers, but they must still choose between marriage and family, on one side, and
personal independence, on the other:

Women have their own choices now. They can choose to be dependent
on a man and be home and be a housewife. Or they could choose to
have an education, their own life, and make whatever they want of it
themselves. I’ll probably have to pick one or the other.

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As Letitia implies, women’s contingency plans take these two general

forms. A minority accept, often after much soul-searching, that if push
comes to shove, domestic commitments will come ﬁ rst, even if this means
sacriﬁ cing a career they once anticipated. After seeing the relentless time
demands and glass ceilings in her work as a television producer, Lauren reluc-
tantly concluded that her career ambitions might need to take a back seat to
parenthood:

If you asked me a few years ago, I would have said I’d like to make
work and child rearing equal. Now, if one has to take more impor-
tance, I would pick child rearing . . . Maybe I’m not meant to be this
career woman that I thought I was going to be. I’ve changed my goals,
and they’re more attainable now.

At twenty-six, Stephanie, an accountant, grappled with a similar shift in

her outlook:

Family and children, that’s the most important thing to me now. As
far as a job goes, I don’t know if I’ll ever ﬁ nd the career or have the
time to have the career that I actually wanted or am right for.

While these sentiments conform to stories of “opt-out” women who

relinquish work to focus on marriage and motherhood, most women had
different contingency plans. Chrystal and Miranda exemplify this different
approach. As a twenty-six-year-old single mother and midlevel administrator
in a publishing ﬁ rm, Chrystal stressed the need to take care of her family all
by herself:

My philosophy is I’d rather think about it as if I have to do it all
myself. And if someone else helps, it will be extra. But depending on
someone else—that’s when you set yourself up for disappointment and
failure.

Single, without children, and working at a computer company at twenty-

seven, Miranda focused on holding onto her hard-won and vigilantly guarded
realm of personal control:

I’m always conscious of trying to be responsible for myself. I ﬁ ercely
ﬁ ght for my independence. Any time I feel that someone’s threatening
that, my claws come out. I’m usually easy-going, but my indepen-
dence is something I cannot have anyone overstep.

As Figures 6.1 and 6.2 show, fallback positions stressing self-reliance are

much more prevalent than those stressing domestic pursuits. This view persists

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127

Single
parent

Dual earner

Traditional

Middle &

upper

middle

Working

class & poor

All women

Self-reliant

Neotraditional

f i g u r e 6 . 1 Women’s fallback positions, by family background and class.

100

African-

American

White

Latina

Asian

All women

Self-reliant

Neotraditional

f i g u r e 6 . 2 Women’s fallback positions, by ethnic background.

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t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

across the boundaries of family experience, class, and ethnicity. Seven out of
ten women from dual-earner homes, slightly less than three-quarters of those
from single-parent homes, and more than three-quarters of those from tradi-
tional homes hold this view. While women’s positions on this question differ
slightly by class, it is not in the direction that might be expected given well-
educated women’s better job opportunities. Over 60 percent of middle-class
women stress self-reliant strategies, and over 80 percent of working-class and
poor women concur. Racial identity also shows some variation, from a high
of nearly all African-American women to a low of three in ﬁ ve non-Hispanic
white women stressing self-reliance.

In short, despite their diverse back-

grounds, most young women emphasize self-reliance as a practical strategy
for navigating the uncertainties of twenty-ﬁ rst-century life.

Why do so many young women seek self-reliance, and what distinguishes

them from those who veer toward a more traditional pattern? Widespread
and fundamental shifts in the structure of marriage, work, and child rearing
are reshaping women’s options and life chances. Few young women have been
insulated from these shifts, but they have been touched in different ways and
are prompted to craft a variety of responses.

Pushed and Pulled toward Self-Reliance

The lives of parents, other adults, and peers, as well as their own experiences
in jobs and relationships, have provided lessons about the dangers of domes-
ticity and the attractions of independence. These observations and encounters
have convinced most women that their security and personal happiness are
too important to leave to the vagaries of someone else’s choices. Most have
never been married, but some are divorced and others are in exclusive part-
nerships. Most are postponing childbearing, but some have become mothers.
They grew up in different types of households and economic circumstances,
but across all these differences, a combination of fear and hope has pushed
and pulled young women toward self-reliance.

mothers’ mixed messages

Even though mothers’ lives provide an especially important template for
their daughters, they do not provide unambiguous models to emulate. Young
women see complexity in their maternal examples and distinguish between
admirable features and ones they prefer to reject. They derive life lessons not
simply from their mothers’ options and choices but also by observing—and

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129

judging—their longer-run consequences. Whatever the model, young women
see compelling reasons to seek independence in their own lives.

The Perils of Domesticity

Daughters feel appreciation and empathy for mothers who stressed domestic-
ity, but most also see psychological, social, and economic risks in following
a course that might leave them isolated, overburdened, or ﬁ nancially vul-
nerable. Some mothers explicitly pointed out “mistakes” they hoped their
daughters would not make. Anita took to heart her mother’s urging to hold
onto the work aspirations she herself had surrendered:

My mother’s always saying she doesn’t want me to repeat the same
self-defeating mistakes she made and not live up to my potential. So
I don’t want to succumb to that kind of mind-set.

Some domestic mothers conveyed a veiled sense of regret, leaving the

impression that too much devotion to caring for others, however important
and satisfying, can hinder the development of an independent self. Lauren
reﬂ ected on the cost her mother paid, even though she enjoyed a high stan-
dard of living as the wife of a successful stockbroker:

My mother sort of gave everything she had to the family and now that
we’re grown up, she’s taking care of my grandmother, so I fear that
would take away from my “self.”

Women are also concerned about the perils of being left alone or with

too much housework. They vow not to cater to an absent or “lazy” husband.

Reﬂ ecting on her mother’s responsibility to keep the home ﬁ res burning
while her father worked late and traveled to faraway places, Rachel refused
to risk the same fate:

I’m not afraid of being alone, but I am afraid of being with somebody
who’s a jerk. I’m very much afraid of making a wrong decision and
marrying somebody who’s absent like my dad was.

And Patricia rejected her mother’s example of doing everything at home

while also pursuing a demanding career:

My mother’s such a leftover from the ﬁ fties and did everything for my
father. I’m not planning to fall into that trap. I’m really not willing to
take that from any guy at all.

When a mother’s domesticity led to ﬁ nancial decline or ruin, it provided

an especially powerful lesson. Nina never forgot how her family slid into

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poverty after her father abandoned them. Vowing to never ﬁ nd herself so
unprotected and vulnerable, she refused to share economic control, though
she had been living happily with her boyfriend for several years:

’Cause of what I’ve seen my mother go through, I’m a big control
freak. All the bills are under my name because God forbid he doesn’t
pay something. He says, “You’re too independent,” and I say, “Would
you rather me be dependent on you?” It’s not that I don’t trust him.
I just don’t want to see what happened to my mom happen to me, so
I’m doing things to prevent that.

These experiences convinced women that even if domesticity may look

appealing in the short run, their long-run happiness and survival depend
on establishing an independent base in the world of work. Looking back on
her mother’s sense of betrayal, Angela knew she needed to prepare for the
unknown:

She trusted that her marriage would stay together and it wouldn’t mat-
ter that she didn’t work, wasn’t marketable. When somebody makes
all these vows, you should be able to trust that. It’s a little tragic, but
I would never put myself in that position, ever. I feel like I always have
to be ready if my husband leaves me.

The Advantages of Self-Reliance

Mothers’ efforts to achieve autonomy also proved inspirational. Barbara drew
lessons not just from her mother’s difﬁ culties after her father left home but
from her mother’s subsequent efforts to get on her feet. This resilience con-
vinced her to seek her own goals, with or without a partner:

The implicit message coming from my mom was that there’s no hap-
pily ever after with marriage and if you want a certain life, you have to
support yourself. It taught me the ability to survive. That’s a big thing
I still carry with me—you can do it.

Women extracted the same message even when their parents stayed

together. Danisha noticed her mother beneﬁ ted not only from having a job
but also from the identity and way of life it gave her:

She taught me your marriage is not who you are. It’s one thing to want
to live with your husband and all that good stuff, but don’t get to the
point where you can’t do things on your own. Because a lot of women,
friends of hers, regret that life has passed them by and they’re stuck.

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Michelle took a similar message from her mother’s struggle to break out

of a deﬂ ating marital dynamic by building her own career:

When I was younger, my mom was very dependent on my dad, and
any unkind word he said to her, she would burst into tears. She had to
get over that, and now she’s at the point where she is a very indepen-
dent person, very get-up-and-go.

Mothers also inspired daughters by using their resources to care for their

children as well as themselves. Chrystal saw the strength of all women in her
mother’s hard work:

It says a lot about her dedication to me and my sister, trying to make
sure that we were taken care of. On a broader scale, it says a lot about
women in general. No one’s gonna do it for you; you have to go and
do it yourself.

Beyond Mothers

Teachers, mentors, and bosses also provide models of independence that can
underscore the rationale for self-reliance. Watching her mother languish with
no job or husband, Nicole turned to her high school teachers for motivation
and guidance:

My mother was so fragile by the time I was coming of age that other
women had an impact personally and in terms of career. Several teach-
ers were very important because they were independent women, who
I looked up to. I really grabbed on to them as role models.

Letitia struggled to ﬁ gure out how to build a life different from her stay-

at-home mother, who fell into poverty when her husband left. Looking to
women who “are doing it for themselves,” Letitia glimpsed the person she
could become in her high school mentor, a young woman who directed an
after-school program and took her “under her wing”:

Belinda was raised two blocks away from here, so I see me when I look
at her. She’s a single, beautiful, twenty-nine-year-old Puerto Rican
female. She has a car, a condo, everything. She got her master’s, and
she did it all by herself. She takes no shortcuts.

Nina adopted a similar road map from her boss, who offered an uplifting

example of occupational and ﬁ nancial achievement:

My boss, she’s phenomenal, truly a role model. She did the executive
MBA program and got her degree in two years with the company.

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t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

The lessons young women drew from others accentuated the messages

their mothers conveyed. They illustrated how self-reliance can nourish self-
esteem and also provide insurance against such risks as being abandoned or
stuck in an unworkable relationship.

Models to Emulate and Avoid

Most daughters distilled the same message from different examples: self-
reliance has intrinsic value and offers protection in an uncertain world. A
daughter might have qualms about making different choices than her mother,
but such mixed feelings do not prevent her from following a different path,
especially when she can draw on other, more attractive models. Angela com-
pared her mother’s domestic “choice” to her stepmother’s “modern” stance:

I respect my mother’s choice, but my father left her, so I feel like I have
to prove I can support an entire family on my own if I have to. I know
my stepmom feels this way. She’s more modern, so she would never
put herself in a position to rely on her husband for a sense of security.

Most daughters considered the mix of attractions and pitfalls in their

mothers’ choices, weighing what to admire against what to question. They
also found inspiration in other women’s lives. All of these sources conveyed
the message that they should hold onto a base in the world outside the home,
whether or not they marry; maintain their own identity, even if they are
responsible for the care of others; and preserve a realm of personal control,
whether or not they are in an intimate relationship. These strategies offer a
practical and hopeful alternative to the Hobson’s choice of either being left
unprepared or trapped in an unhappy marriage.

experience as the teacher

The examples set by others are important, but they cannot substitute for lived
experience. Even when mothers and other women provided appealing images
of domesticity, most daughters nevertheless veered toward self- reliance. For
Rosa, personal experiences reinforced the life lessons gleaned from parents
and others:

I’ve become who I am not only because of my parents, but also the situ-
ations I’ve been in. I learned from my mistakes. The bad situations have
made me stronger and wiser. I am independent, and thankful for that.

Experiences with boyfriends and other partners reinforced a grow-

ing conviction that self-sufﬁ ciency provides the best insurance against the

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133

uncertainties of modern relationships.

At twenty-six, Anita gradually real-

ized she had given up too much of herself in her early relationships:

I would like to be in a relationship, but I haven’t had such great expe-
riences. I would tend to say “whatever,” even though it’s not really
what I want, and look back on it later and see I ignored my needs
until it became a real problem. So I’m realizing I don’t need a man to
be happy.

Serena, also twenty-six, felt regret about allowing a relationship to under-

mine her law school plans:

In some ways, love is dangerous; it can take away from other things.
That’s why I didn’t get into law school, because instead of studying,
I would go out with him. So the things I’m into now, I wouldn’t have
time to put a guy ﬁ rst.

Anita and Serena both decided to eschew marriage until they establish

a ﬁ rmer professional foothold, but others reached the same conclusion after
getting married. At twenty-ﬁ ve, Brianna rued the fact she had allowed her
ex-husband to change her occupational course, but saw a silver lining in the
breakup:

I wanted to be an artist, and he really hated it, so I stopped, which
I regret. I lost myself during the marriage, so I actually got a lot out
of [the breakup]. Now I know what I don’t want from a relationship.
I know what I want from myself. It made me become the person I am,
not the person he wanted me to be.

Donna also hit a snag when she learned of her husband’s inﬁ delity, but

she returned after a temporary separation. Like Brianna, she brought a new
determination to take care of herself and never again let a partner undermine
her need to survive on her own:

He thought I would die without him, but I said, “I’d rather be poor
and happy than have this and be miserable.” I started all over again
and did ﬁ ne for myself. So now I never worry about if I can take care
of myself, ’cause I know I can, no matter what.

Those who married early, like those who stayed single, found the loss of

autonomy an unacceptable price for a relationship. Even when they decided
to stay, they vowed to retain an independent identity and seek their own
place in the world of work. Needless to say, the search for self-reliance took
on greater urgency for single mothers, where self-reliance became a blueprint

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t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

for taking care of their children as well as themselves. Some decided having a
demanding or unsupportive partner was worse than having no partner at all.

Rosa, a single mother at twenty-one, believed she could offer her young son
more on her own, even if it meant relying temporarily on public assistance:

My baby’s father was very demanding. He was stuck, and he had me
stuck, too. So after two years, I wouldn’t take it any more. I feel like
I can go faster and have more for our life. I want to ﬁ nish college and
be a social worker.

Also a single mother, Monique’s hopes for an equal partnership transformed

into a more “realistic” approach when the father of her two sons lost his job
and then, in Monique’s words, “deserted” them. At twenty-three, she decided
she could not let her own and her children’s survival depend on someone else.
For better or worse, she needed to chart a more independent course:

I was dependent on my kids’ father, and I never want to be dependent
on a man ever again. He lost his way, I guess because he lost his job,
but I didn’t lose my way. So I have the kids now, and I want the job,
the career. When I have all that, I can add a man if he’s a good guy,
and if he’s not, let him go.

Whether single or married, childless or a parent, these young women

found risks in surrendering a barely achieved autonomy. Partners deemed too
demanding, unreliable, or untrustworthy fell short of their egalitarian ide-
als. When partners threatened to knock a barely launched career off course
and undermine an identity in formation, women reacted with a heightened
determination to develop their own resources and make their own way in
the world. Concerned about losing her independence, Miranda broke off an
engagement after the wedding invitations had been sent:

I compromised much more than I should have, so the breakup was an
incredible lesson—something I needed to learn on my own. And it
was a very cheap lesson . . . just the cost of a wedding dress and a little
embarrassment. I learned that nobody dies of not being in a relation-
ship. So that’s what I live by, even to this day.

Whatever their differences, these women share a determination to carve out

a realm of personal autonomy. Self-reliance appears to offer the surest route to
navigate between the ideal of equality and the dangers of dependence. It nur-
tures the self and provides a safety net no matter what the future might bring.
But self-reliance does not preclude commitment. Once on safer ground, they
will be in a better position to build the ﬂ exible, egalitarian bonds they prefer.

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Strategies of Self-Reliance

Most women concluded, in Ashley’s words, “You have to depend on yourself.”
But since there are few well-worn paths that lead toward self-reliance for
women, they must blaze new ones. This requires the invention of innovative
strategies that offer a measure of practical and psychological independence.
Giving concrete form to the notion of “self-reliance,” these efforts include
establishing a solid base in the world of work, carving out a realm of personal
autonomy within intimate relationships, creating a support network of kin
and friends, and redeﬁ ning what it means to be a good mother. Although
these are private responses to social dilemmas that seem intensely personal,
they reﬂ ect a strongly felt need to alter the institutionalized practices of gen-
der.

By seeking economic, social, and emotional autonomy, young women

are actively redesigning marriage, work, and motherhood.

seeking a base in the world of work

Self-reliant women look to the workplace as the most straightforward route
to gaining ﬁ nancial security, social status, and personal identity. Indeed,
young women today are just as likely as young men to say they are aiming
for greater responsibility at work.

Reared by a stay-at-home mother in a

middle-class suburb, Angela saw paid work as the way to avoid her mother’s
situation:

I would never put myself in that position, ever . . . I feel like I always
have to be ready, like what if my husband leaves me? My dad says,
“You want to be able to support yourself and have your own indepen-
dence,” and I agree with him.

Danisha’s parents both worked, and she agreed that her economic pros-

pects depend on building a career, not presuming she can live on another
person’s income:

Heaven forbid my marriage doesn’t work. You can’t take a cavalier
attitude, so I want to establish myself. Because I don’t ever want to
have to end up like, “Oh my God, what am I gonna do?” I want to be
able to do what I have to do and still be okay.

Sustained work participation appears to offer not only economic survival,

but also social integration and personal esteem. After years of training to
become a physical therapist, Megan viewed her work as central to her identity
and social status:

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I want to do more than just support myself. I want to be successful and
have some recognition. I deﬁ nitely think of my work as a career.

Donna dropped out of high school to drive a delivery truck, but her job in

this male-dominated world demanded a nonnegotiable respect as important
to her as to any man:

My husband tells me to quit my job and go to school, but I have to
work. This is me; this is who I am. I can’t not work. I didn’t work once
for eight months, and I’ll never do that again.

Though analysts often distinguish between “needing” to work and “want-

ing” to work, these women see such distinctions as false and misleading.

their view, work is essential precisely because it offers both ﬁ nancial and psy-
chological beneﬁ ts. Barbara could not separate the search for gratifying work
from the search for a well-paid job:

What’s most important is fulﬁ llment in my work and being able to
support yourself. Those go hand in hand. A job can be great in every
sense, but only if I’m making what I feel I’m worth.

Despite the glass ceilings they may encounter, these women still see the

workplace as the best place to ﬁ nd a measure of control over their destiny.
For Danisha, who is planning to study medicine, building a career offers the
chance to ﬁ nd something no one can take away:

There are certain things I can have control over, that I can have some
hand in guiding my life in a certain direction. A job is something you
always have. You can always go to it. So the career is necessary.

Given the erosion of job security in ofﬁ ces as well as factories, it may

seem ironic and even misguided to see work as “always yours,” to use Dan-
isha’s words. But compared to love and marriage, Nancy agreed, at least it is
possible to set goals for work and then pursue them in a series of deﬁ nable
steps:

Work is very important because it is something I can strive for, push
myself to be better at. There might be frustrations and stress involved
at work, but work doesn’t break your heart like relationships do.

For self-reliant women, work is both an essential end in itself and a means

to other equally important ends. About to graduate from college, Letitia knew
that the ﬁ nancial independence offered by a career would make it possible to
achieve other markers of middle-class status, like home ownership, that had

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eluded her poverty-stricken mother. Only then, she reasoned, could she afford
to take the apparently riskier step of sharing her life with someone else:

No doubt, I’m gonna get my degree and have a career in criminal jus-
tice. I want my freedom and independence, and then I want to buy a
house—so it’s mine, no matter what. That’s my ﬁ nished product out
of all the hard work, and nobody’s ever going to take that away from
me. Those are things I’m gonna get. The only thing in doubt is the
right man to share it with.

refashioning relationships

Self-reliant women see two distinct dangers in traditional marriages. First,
since marriage no longer promises permanence, they worry about relying too
much on another person. Though only twenty, Jennifer assumed that the
legal status of marriage offered scant protection from the ﬂ eeting emotion
of “love”:

Just because you have that piece of paper, it’s a false security. Because
the other person can still fall out of love with you; they can still cheat
on you; all those bad things can still happen. It’s nice to believe in it
’cause it’s tradition, but that doesn’t really promise you anything.

Second, self-reliant women also believe the pressures of unequal marriage

will constrain their efforts to establish an independent self. At twenty-six,
Catherine was more concerned about losing her hard-won identity than los-
ing a partner’s love:

When it comes down to the wire, my biggest fear is that I will lose
the sense of who I am. I know the life I’ve made for myself, and I know
that to make myself happy, I have to have more control over my sur-
roundings. And if I don’t have that, I’m not going to make anybody
else happy.

Postponing Marriage

Self-reliant women seek to avoid the constraints of traditional marriage while
still holding onto the possibility of ﬁ nding a lifelong partner. First, they plan
to avoid early commitments that might undermine self-development. Most
eschew early marriage and “premature” commitments. As Danisha explained:

I want to be stable for myself, so I’m not getting married prematurely.
I don’t fear growing older. I’ll wait till I’m seventy-two if I need to.

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Yet postponing marriage does not have to mean avoiding relationships.

As the differences blur between marriage and other intimate bonds, self-
reliant women view marriage as one of a number of options. Ashley preferred
to steer clear of any intense relationship:

I meet a lot of guys, and I’m pushing them away because I have to take
care of myself ﬁ rst. I can’t really think about you at this point. You
will hold me back.

Most, however, prefer to ﬁ nd a partnership balancing closeness with room

to pursue independent goals. Recently divorced, Brianna looked for someone
who would respect her need for personal space:

I have no interest in getting married again, because you do lose an
incredible amount of freedom. Now, I’m looking for someone where
we don’t have to be attached at the hip. I just want to know I can call
you up, and you’ll be there.

Raising the Standard

By postponing marriage to focus on personal development, self-reliant women
hold high standards for an acceptable partner. They want to ﬁ nd someone
who will support their need for autonomy and who is also self-directed. As
a Wall Street trader, Maria did not relish the idea of supporting her current
boyfriend:

The guy makes thirty-ﬁ ve thousand dollars a year, which is nothing.
I always felt like I have to take care of myself, but I just don’t want to
take care of you. You take care of yourself, I’ll take care of myself, and
then we can be together.

Letitia did not wish to “settle” by letting her boyfriend support her:

He’s like, “I’m ready to support you.” And I don’t want anybody
to support me. I have my life set already, and I’m not gonna mess
it up. I think about marriage and meeting Mr. Right, but I can’t
settle.

These high standards signal a determination to free the concept of com-

mitment from the strictures of distinct “gender roles.” Even in the context of
marriage, they deem ﬁ nancial self-sufﬁ ciency essential—not just as an insur-
ance policy in the event of a breakup, but also because it offers personal
independence within a committed relationship. For Nancy, separate bank
accounts are a necessary condition for marital commitment:

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I enjoy my ﬁ nancial independence. I would deﬁ nitely want to have
separate accounts and keep our money separate, so I’m not under the
ﬁ nancial control of my husband.

Nina used the same rationale to reject her long-term live-in boyfriend’s

offer to support her while she pursued an MBA:

Tim said I could stop working to complete my MBA. I thought
about it for two seconds, but I couldn’t do it. I need to have my own
money.

Seeing Marriage as Optional and Reversible

Although few wish to remain permanently single, and no one relishes the
thought of enduring a breakup, most nevertheless reserve the option to reject
marriage or leave an unhappy one. Even married women agree. With a young
child and a sporadically employed husband, Louise admitted she would only
stay married if he shared both breadwinning and caretaking:

I would like to stay together, but I’m also not going to put up with
anything just to accomplish that. If I’m gonna work and take care of
the baby and he’s not gonna try, then I can be by myself. If he’s just
gonna lay around and not put in a effort, that’s not fair.

Many entertained the option of not marrying. Though not ideal, going it

alone looks better than surrendering hard-won autonomy to an unsatisfying
relationship. After leaving a marriage in which she felt responsible “for every-
thing,” Chrystal decided staying single was better than being let down:

It isn’t that I prefer it, but I just don’t see myself being married. It
doesn’t matter whether I’d like to or not. To some degree, I would feel
as if something’s missing, but if I’m going to be successful in another
area, then I wouldn’t beat myself up for it.

Maria agreed with Chrystal that she could look to work, friends, and fam-

ily to ﬁ ll her life with meaning:

I can’t settle. So if I don’t ﬁ nd it, do I live in sorrow? To me, it’s not one
thing that’s ultimately important. If I didn’t have my family or a career or
my friends, I would be equally unhappy. So it’s really a circle. Maybe [not
getting married] takes away a bit of the pie, but it’s still just a slice.

Some women reject legal marriage, but not commitment. However much

they wish to fall in love, they do not view marital vows as either a guaran-
tee of lasting love or a legal structure to nourish it. Even though Rachel

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had grown up with married parents, she put little faith in marriage as an
institution:

Getting married doesn’t thrill me in any way, shape, or form. You get
to throw a party and have a great dress, but I don’t think marriage
means you’re going to be together forever. And not getting married
doesn’t mean you’re not going to be together forever.

These women see few practical differences between cohabiting and having

a marriage license. They are part of a growing group of young people who plan
to cohabit either before or instead of getting a marriage license. Pamela Smock
reports that the percentage of ﬁ rst-time marriages preceded by cohabitation
has risen substantially, from about 10 percent in the mid-1970s to over
50 percent by the mid-1990s, with an even higher percentage for remarriages.
Among women, the percentage who cohabited by the time they reached
their late thirties rose from around 30 percent to close to 50 percent in the
same time period. These “trial marriages,” as Sheldon Danziger calls them,
are more socially accepted than ever.

Claudia echoes this perspective, even

though her own parents had a stable marriage:

People change. So the whole idea of marriage, where you promise to
love someone forever, seems sort of unrealistic. If you love someone,
getting married is almost incidental.

Not to be derailed from their personal path, these women avoided mak-

ing early commitments—or, in some cases, left husbands—to focus on self-
development.

They concluded that being unwilling to “settle” in the short

run will help them to ﬁ nd a worthwhile bond in the long run. And there
are good reasons to reach this conclusion, since postponing marriage and
building a career do appear to confer beneﬁ ts. In fact, the chance of divorce
declines with each year a woman postpones marriage, and educated and high-
earning women are less likely to divorce than other women.

Shauna agreed,

detailing how taking the time to develop an independent self is the best
route to building a healthy relationship:

If you’re not happy with yourself, then you can’t be happy with some-
one else. I’m not looking for someone to ﬁ ll a void. When you’re con-
tent and happy with who you are, then you can give more of yourself
to someone else.

Self-reliant women do not reject commitment; they just wish to rede-

ﬁ ne it. Instead of seeing marriage as a required and irreversible state, it is
a desirable but optional and reversible option that also needs to offer room

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for personal autonomy and a better life than they can create on their own.

Holding onto the possibility of balancing an independent self with a lasting
commitment, they are also prepared to go it alone if the right partner never
comes along. Miranda explained:

My boyfriend is a great guy, and I have nothing against marriage.
If I meet the person who is perfect, I’ll do it. But if it doesn’t hap-
pen, I have no problem with it either. I’m not afraid of not ﬁ nding
someone.

These women are leading this “generation’s redeﬁ nition of marriage,” as a

recent survey of young Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-
four concluded.

They are less likely than men to believe parents must be

married (50 percent of women, compared to 63 percent among men), more
likely to question marriage as a way of life (45 percent, compared to 26 per-
cent), and more discouraged about the prospects for marriage. Yet they are
also increasingly conﬁ dent that remaining single is not just an option, but a
potential route to a good life.

redesigning motherhood

As they seek ﬁ nancial independence at work and personal autonomy in rela-
tionships, self-reliant women face inevitable questions about the place of
motherhood in their lives. Young women and teens overwhelmingly hope
to become mothers, with surveys ﬁ nding that 90 percent say they want to
have children and most saying they want at least two.

Yet this wish does

not necessarily mean endorsing traditional mothering, with its ideology of
pure selﬂ essness. Such a construction makes it difﬁ cult to see how—or if—
motherhood can be reconciled with the search for independence and self-
development. Maria saw her personal goals as incompatible with the sacriﬁ ces
her mother made:

It would be very hard for me to be a mother, because I could never
be—and I don’t want to be—the mother [my mother] was. I don’t
know that I could be that giving. You need to surrender your life.
That’s what she wanted, but I don’t want to give up as much as she
gave up.

The answer to the enduring conﬂ ict between autonomy and mother-

hood seems less determined and more contingent for young women than it
appeared for their mothers. Megan viewed motherhood as an open question,
not a preordained choice:

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I don’t think my parents had children because they decided to as much
as it was the thing to do. Now there are more choices. I expect to have
a better career and then decide, rather than having children and then
try to struggle along with it.

In redesigning motherhood to better balance selﬂ ess devotion with per-

sonal autonomy, some young women postponed childbearing, while others
found early motherhood a spur to their ambition. Most view marriage as the
ideal environment for rearing children, but are nevertheless preparing for
other contingencies. Everyone agrees, however, that good mothering can and
often must include earning the bread as much as baking it. In all of these
ways, self-reliant women are not only redesigning motherhood, but redeﬁ n-
ing the family.

Postponing Parenthood, or Not

Most self-reliant women plan to postpone motherhood until they can count
on a stable work life, but a small group found that early motherhood spurred
them to seek a career. For postponing women, developing the “self ” is a
precondition for having a child. They view motherhood as an optional and
contingent choice that depends on a number of prior achievements. Barbara
had no doubt that work comes ﬁ rst, even if this means resisting pressures to
procreate:

I wouldn’t have a child until I was in the right place. So getting the
right work is doubly important. It’s got to come ﬁ rst, essentially.

Catherine agreed:

I’m twenty-seven and nobody in my family would wait until they’re
twenty-seven, but this is the real world. So over the next seven or eight
years, work would be my agenda. Maybe I’m selﬁ sh, but I’m going to
put kids off until I’m thirty-ﬁ ve at least.

Other women reversed this sequence, developing a self-reliant outlook

after having a child. Some are single and others have husbands with shaky
employment ties, but all these young mothers found having a child spurred
rather than dampened their aspirations.

Louise dropped out of school and

married early, but changed her outlook when she realized her child’s well-
being depended on her efforts:

I’m going to become a nurse, and I have to do it, because I have a
daughter, and I want to be able to give her things. I don’t want to
work as a cashier for the rest of my life.

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Theresa underwent the same change:

I’m not working to take advantage of my kids; I’m working for a roof
over our heads. So I’m gonna work to better myself, to try to make it
out there, so that I can raise my girls in the proper way.

There are clear signs that a “mommy gap” is developing between middle-

class women, who defer parenthood, and poor women, who are more likely to
become young mothers.

In fact, during the period between 2000 and 2006,

only 31 percent of women ages twenty-ﬁ ve to twenty-nine with a four-year
college degree had borne a child, compared to 62 percent of women with less
education.

But despite these differences, there are some surprising simi-

larities between afﬂ uent and less advantaged women. While middle-class
women are increasingly inclined to postpone parenthood and working-class
and poor women are more likely to engage in early childbearing, both groups
are underemphasizing marriage and placing greater stress on self-reliance.

Separating Marriage and Motherhood

The child-rearing strategies of those who postponed motherhood and those
who entered it early are converging despite their social and class differences.
While marriage might be the ideal context for rearing children, the uncer-
tainty of relationships requires both groups to prepare for other contingen-
cies. Some are resolved to forgo motherhood if the right person does not come
along, but most entertain the possibility of becoming a mother whether or
not they marry. For Megan, having a child depended on ﬁ nding a partner
willing to share equally:

I would be willing to make sacriﬁ ces, but I would expect my husband
to do the same. If he’s not willing to do that, I certainly wouldn’t want
a child.

But Anita, speaking for the majority, planned to pursue motherhood even

if she remained single:

I want to have the experience of being a mother, so I want to be in the
place where I could, if I needed, have a child on my own. I want to
know that I can support a child on my own, that I don’t need a man
for it.

Indeed, a growing percentage of women from all social backgrounds are

either having or are prepared to have children on their own. In fact, in 2006,
for the ﬁ rst time in U.S. history, unmarried women accounted for about 40
percent of all births and about half of births to women under thirty (compared

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to 6 percent in 1960). Even though about half of these births are to cohabit-
ing but unmarried couples, that leaves 20 percent of births to women living
without a partner.

Self-reliant women may not welcome single mother-

hood, but they are preparing for it. Letitia hoped for the best, but felt she
needed to be ready to care for a child on her own:

You can’t force people to be responsible, and if it happens that way,
I would make it the best for my child, whether he’s there or not.

And Miranda placed the link between mother and child, with or without

a father, at the core of family life:

I see a family, I look at the mother. If I see her in any kind of way held
back, I don’t like it. If she looks happy, then I think that’s a good fam-
ily. ’Cause I think she’s really the central ﬁ gure.

Across the educational spectrum, women are willing to reject traditional

deﬁ nitions of family life centered on the bond between wife and husband. In
fact, while single motherhood remains more prevalent among those without
a college education, college-educated single mothers are growing at a much
faster pace. Well-educated single mothers are also more likely to have their
ﬁ rst child after age thirty, compared with only about 8 percent overall, but all
of these women have decided to have a child without a husband.

If indus-

trialism, with its need for a socially and geographically mobile labor force,
contributed to the rise of the “conjugal family” with a husband-wife unit
at its center, then the rise of postindustrialism has supported the “mother-
child” family, where fathers may or may not be present.

In a world of fragile

marital ties and mothers’ employment, bearing and raising a child on one’s
own may not be ideal, but it is an available option.

Breadwinners Are Good Mothers

With or without marriage, self-reliant women are also reframing their views
of good mothering to include breadwinning. Because these women do not
wish to depend on another’s person’s income, they view the ﬁ nancial rewards
of a good job as essential to being a good mother, not an option or an alterna-
tive. Barbara believed that only by establishing her own economic founda-
tion could she secure the well-being of any child she might have:

I don’t know about the marriage, but I deﬁ nitely picture myself as the
breadwinner. If I’m gonna have this child, I have to know that I have
“x” amount of dollars coming in or in the bank to support this kid and
myself at the level I want.

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Yet the desire—and need—for personal autonomy clashes with anxiety

about living up to the cultural standard of good mothering. To reduce these
internal and external pressures, they perceive the need to challenge the argu-
ment that a child’s needs should supersede a mother’s, reasoning instead that
a child’s well-being is inseparably intertwined with a mother’s happiness.
Jennifer saw her own development as a necessary ingredient in rearing happy,
well-adjusted children:

My personal happiness would have to be equal with the children; oth-
erwise there won’t be any children’s happiness. ’Cause if I’m miserable,
they’re gonna be miserable too.

Miranda echoed this view:

There’s a different type of growth with a child, but ﬁ rst, I have to
make sure I’m okay. Because if the life is getting sucked out of you,
how can you give life to someone else?

To lessen the pressure of the ideology that only full-time motherhood will

do, they also view employed mothers as excellent models for their children.
Catherine declared:

I have to almost show my children, “Look, this is how people take care
of themselves, and mommy can do this.” I want that example always.

And Patricia agreed:

I have a pretty strong work ethic, and I feel it’s important for the kids
to see work isn’t a bad thing.

Making motherhood consistent with carving out a personal space clashes

with the widespread and persistent concern that children suffer when their
mothers work (even though decades of research have failed to show this). Self-
reliant women may not dispel these worries, but they do not acquiesce to them.
Social disapproval may leave them feeling uncomfortable, but it does not dic-
tate their strategies. Willing to endure social opprobrium, whether or not it is
fair, Brianna did not intend to let this prevent her pursuit of a career:

I’ll be one of those women they talk about in the magazines all the
time. Like, “I feel guilty ’cause I’m not home, but I don’t want to be
home.”

Despite having varied backgrounds, self-reliant women seek to reconcile

the demands of motherhood with the pursuit of economic self-sufﬁ ciency and
a strong work identity by making breadwinning a part of good mothering.

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They reject the view that mothering demands undiluted altruism and sacri-
ﬁ ce, contending that maternal self-development provides children with spe-
cial beneﬁ ts. Yet they are also prepared to weather the disapproval it will
likely bring, even though they believe pursuing a career need not preclude—
and actually enhances—being a good mother.

creating care networks

Self-reliant women do not want or expect to do it all by themselves, however.
They seek support from a web of friends, kin, and paid help to survive, and
even thrive, on their own. For the most part, they focus on women-centered
networks. Miranda found that relying on female friends and relations helped
her postpone marriage and stick to high standards in the search for a mate:

I’m always surrounded by very strong women. And because I’ve had
such a great relationship with my family, it’s been able to infuse in me
a feeling of not needing to be in a relationship.

Rachel drew on a similar safety net of support:

I want to get married and have children, but I can spend the rest of my
life alone. As long as I have my sisters and my friends, I’m okay.

If friends and kin are integral to remaining happily single, becoming

a mother makes them even more important. A caretaking network helps
mothers combine full-time work with childbearing and, if needed, do so
without a steady partner. While working-class women leaned toward call-
ing on family members, and middle-class women more often looked to paid
caretakers, they all plan to rely on others. Reliance on her own stay-at-home
mom allowed Letitia to plan to work full-time, even as a single mother:

I have it all planned out—my mom’s living next to me because
she’s going to take care of my kids while I’m working. So to have an
unhealthy relationship with a man—I’d never do that—but as long as
I’ve got my mom, I can be the provider, the mother and father.

Suzanne believed the exposure to other children and adults would help

her child develop skills that staying home would not:

Staying at home isn’t necessary. Kids get along just as well if they go
to nursery school and interact with other people.

For these women, achieving autonomy requires delegating, whether to

family members or paid caretakers. Again resisting injunctions for exclusive

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mothering, they look to a network of caretakers to enhance their own and
their children’s welfare. Convinced her own mother’s isolation contributed to
both her depression and her violent actions, Rachel hoped getting help from
others would allow her to avoid her mother’s mistakes:

Part of the reason my mother was [physically] abusive—there was no
one there. So I want somebody else there. That way, should I ever
get to the point where I think I’m going to do anything like what
my mother did, I’d be able to remove myself from that situation. If
I didn’t have a way to make sure, I wouldn’t have children.

If pursuing self-reliance means achieving an independent identity and

income, it does not mean being isolated or disconnected. John Donne
famously declared that “no man is an island,” and this is certainly the case for
women. In fact, self-reliant women deﬁ ne independence as knowing whom
they can depend on for what.

As Erica declared, “I don’t see leaving it up to

one person. As a woman, you have to delegate responsibilities.” By creating
“chosen families” out of a web of kin, friends, and paid caretakers, self-reliant
women want to blend the search for an independent identity with close con-
nection to others.

converging forces

Though their experiences seem personal and idiosyncratic, the strategies of
self-reliant women are rooted in a shared understanding that traditional mar-
riages no longer seem secure or appealing. Some, like Maria, understood they
are responding to a social context that lowers the chances of ﬁ nding a rela-
tionship like her parents’ egalitarian one:

I would want to have what they had, but I don’t think I’ll ever have
that. I’m twenty-nine and still single, and that’s not old, but some-
times I’m forced to ask myself if it’s an unrealistic thing. It’s a different
way to live now.

Whether they emphasize the rewards of self-development or the risks of

subordinating their identities and bank accounts, self-reliant women feel
caught between domesticity’s drawbacks and equality’s elusiveness. Though
they count on fallback strategies to survive in a less than perfect world, they
nevertheless see a silver lining in taking care of themselves. Recalling her
grandmother’s injunction that, “whatever you have in your brain, whatever
you have learned, no one can take that away from you,” Miranda knew she
could rely on herself. Chrystal took pride in her budding publishing career,

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her condo, and her ability to care for her young son. Comparing these feats
to her parents’ lifelong struggles with poverty, she marveled at her own
accomplishments:

Seeing that it’s been just me, I think I’ve accomplished a lot and,
not to sound like I’m better than anyone, I can’t think of anyone else
where I want to be like that person. Because I’m doing pretty well on
my own.

By offering protection against the risks of ﬁ nancial dependence, social iso-

lation, and personal stagnation, self-reliant strategies offer insurance against
many of women’s deepest anxieties. Amid the decline of permanent marriage
and “good provider” husbands, they provide another route to economic sur-
vival and, for the fortunate, ﬁ nancial security. Amid the rise of new occupa-
tional options, they offer new sources of social status and personal esteem.
And amid the rise of new childbearing and child-rearing options, they offer
alternative ways to create strong family ties. Yet even though these converg-
ing social forces make self-reliant strategies seem both necessary and appeal-
ing, they still fall short of women’s highest ideals.

Falling Back on Domesticity

Not all women are falling back on self-reliance; more than a quarter of those
interviewed see independence as more dangerous than domesticity. These
women prefer to center their lives around marriage and motherhood rather
than risk ending up alone, overburdened, or both.

Why did this sizeable minority reach such a different conclusion about

their best chance for the future? Caught between tradition and change, they
face obstacles such as resistant partners and inﬂ exible workplaces that make
domesticity a more appealing option. Yet even they do not see homemaking
as a full-time or permanent pursuit. Though convinced of the need to provide
concerted time and attention to child rearing, they still hope to refashion
traditionalism by incorporating a scaled-back job or career.

better than being alone

For some women, few fates seem worse than remaining on their own. In fact,
watching friends and coworkers who eschewed marriage and motherhood left
them determined to follow a different route. Lauren had no desire to emulate
a friend who refused to “settle”:

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A friend of mine hasn’t had a good relationship—she’s twenty-seven
and never been in love. She’s very bitter. I think she’s looking for
Mr. Perfect, and he’s not coming. I don’t want to be like her, so I’d be
almost willing to settle.

Janet believed her boss’s decision to put work before marriage held too

many long-run dangers:

My current boss, the president of the company, I don’t want to be
like her. She’s had a lot of bad relationships, and she’s forty-two.
She’s not married, with no kids, and she’d like very much to be with
a guy.

Women who turned toward domesticity also discovered unexpected sta-

bility in relationships, which prompted a newfound conﬁ dence in the viabil-
ity of marriage. A tumultuous childhood left Nicole surprised to ﬁ nd herself
happily married at twenty-two:

For the ﬁ rst time in my life, I have a very stable relationship. And a
pretty stable self. I’m really enjoying who I am with my husband.

Though her parents’ unhappy marriage left Connie with little conﬁ dence

in the institution of marriage, she met a “wonderful man” who convinced her
to change her mind:

I haven’t seen evidence of many good marriages, so it wasn’t important
to me. Then we started discussing having a child, and I felt practically,
it’s better to be married. I’m a very practical person. Then he surprised
me and proposed.

These women shifted their priorities in unforeseen ways. Even ambitious

women began to question the primacy of work as they faced difﬁ culties bal-
ancing a relationship with building a career. Unwilling to risk the loss of her
partner, Lauren changed her focus to motherhood:

When I came out of college, I was so motivated, but it seems now that
I would give up work to raise a child. I never would have said that a
couple of years ago, but I wouldn’t sacriﬁ ce this relationship for work.
So now I’m thinking I do want to get married and have children and
that’s more important to me than work.

Traditional partnerships dampened the fear of relying on a partner’s pay-

check. Connie felt grateful that her husband was prepared to be a primary
breadwinner who did not resent her lack of earnings:

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It’s very clichéd, but I had to separate myself from where I came from.
I’m a very practical person, and I found somebody unlike [my] father.
He doesn’t even care how much money I bring in, so I’m lucky.

Domestically inclined women see single women not as an inspiration but

rather as a warning about the costs of putting work ﬁ rst. Their experiences
in a traditional relationship also allayed fears about marriage and mitigated
concerns about relying on another person’s earnings. Faced with giving up a
treasured partner or giving up a measure of independence, they began to opt
for a more traditional bargain.

avoiding overload

If traditional partnerships pulled some women toward the home, inﬂ exible
workplaces also pushed them there. Whether observing others or reﬂ ecting
on their own work experiences, these women worry about the escalating time
demands of contemporary careers.

Even women whose mothers had gone to

work every day believed they would have a harder time balancing a job with
the rest of their life. Elizabeth fully supported her mother’s career, but her
own early work experiences left her doubting she could follow in her mother’s
footsteps:

I thought it was so easy, and now I’m just terriﬁ ed because it seems so
hard. I don’t know how my parents did it, actually.

Janet also marveled at her mother’s success at combining an administra-

tive career with family responsibilities, but she did not see this as a feasible
option in her own life:

It was great [for my mother to work]. I have a lot of respect for that.
But, personally, I don’t know how people do it. I don’t know what you
do if you have kids and your client calls with a crisis at six o’clock at
night. I would go out of my mind.

Faced with time-intensive workplaces, these women fear that a full-time

job will make it difﬁ cult to raise a family without succumbing to exhaustion
and failure. And since time use studies show that employed mothers have
less free time and greater total workloads than stay-at-home mothers, they
have good reason to be concerned. In fact, Suzanne Bianchi, John Robinson,
and Melissa Milkie report that employed mothers average about 71 hours
a week of paid and unpaid work, while mothers without paid jobs average
about 52 hours.

Aware of this bind, if not the exact details, they reluctantly

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turned away from the demands of the “ideal worker” ethos and the single-
minded devotion to work it requires.

Karen did not want to lodge her

identity in—or sacriﬁ ce her personal life to—the apparently all-consuming
requirements of a high-powered career:

When I started going to work, I didn’t want to resign myself to living
that way. Because it’s starting to make me feel like that’s who I am—
it’s starting to deﬁ ne me—and that’s deﬁ nitely not what I want. So
now I’m working in a corporate environment, but knowing that it’s
temporary, knowing that there’s something better.

Since many jobs now require not just full-time but overtime devotion, these

women believe they could have a full family life only by rejecting a career. See-
ing no alternative to this rigid model, Elizabeth felt she had to choose:

I keep hoping someday I’ll have more ﬂ exibility, but I don’t see a
career as an option. Sometimes you have to sacriﬁ ce things, and when
I have kids, that will be more important.

becoming the default caretaker

While the pressure to parent intensively has grown for all women, employed
or not, neotraditional women go further. In addition to believing that only a
parent can provide an acceptable level of care, they believe they are the only
parent available for the job. As Tiffany explained:

I want to work, but I don’t want to have a child in day care. I feel strongly
about someone being with the child, and I know it would have to be me.

In contrast to their work-committed peers, they are not prepared to del-

egate. Instead, motherhood means trading equality for a clear division of
family tasks. Jessica declared:

I know things should be equal, but I want to have a family, so I think
I won’t be able to work—not for the ﬁ rst few years of their lives. I want
to spend time raising them and make sure they’re raised properly.
I wouldn’t want to send them to day care.

Of course, if a father is willing and able to be equally involved, women

need not do it all, even if they are reluctant to rely on a nonparental caretaker.
But those who fell back on domesticity hold little hope that equal sharing is
a realistic goal. Nicole believed she might overcome her husband’s resistance,
but doubted he had the necessary domestic skills:

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I see us both having a very signiﬁ cant role, but I see myself playing
much more of the domestic role, just because he’s so lousy at it.

Dolores knew the problem was motivation, not ability:

I have changed so much on my husband, and he still will not wash
the dishes. He refuses. I guess it’s the way he was raised, because he’s
already set in his ways.

Faced with a resistant partner, these women faced a choice between add-

ing a domestic “second shift” to a demanding job and pulling back from
work. Even though Dolores and her husband both worked full-time, “he feels
he works harder.” When she was offered a promotion at the hospital, where
she worked as an administrator, her husband, a jewelry maker, made it clear
she could accept the added responsibility—as long as she still took care of
matters at home:

Just the way he said, “I have to make up my own mind.” He’s not going
to prevent me. He wouldn’t. It’s just that I have to make provisions.

Ironically, women face intensiﬁ ed parenting pressures just as they have

joined the workplace in unprecedented numbers. The shortage of high-
quality, affordable child care, along with men’s reluctance to pull back from
time-demanding jobs, leave women as the default caretaker.

Despite a pref-

erence for egalitarian parenting, this “structure of gender” exerts great force
on such women, despite their preference for more egalitarian parenting.

ﬁ tting work in

Even though marriage and motherhood take precedence over work or career
for traditional women, few wish to be full-time, long-term homemakers.
Rather than withdrawing completely or indeﬁ nitely from paid work, most
plan to “ﬁ t work in” even as they put family ﬁ rst. These women are falling
back on a “neotraditional” strategy, but only partially and temporarily.

Now that two incomes provide a key way for couples to achieve their

desired standard of living, even women who expect to rely mainly on a part-
ner’s income feel the need to make a contribution. Dolores’s husband felt
ambivalent about seeing her advance to a higher level, but valued her eco-
nomic contributions:

I think it may bother him if I’m moving up the ladder. He may see,
“Oh, she’s moving up, and I’m staying here.” . . . [but] there’s always
difﬁ culties when the money is low, so he wants me to work.

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And even though Tiffany had little desire to be the main breadwinner, she

felt a personal responsibility to help out ﬁ nancially:

I wouldn’t feel comfortable supporting a man, so he would be the
major breadwinner. But I would be a contributor. I want to work, but
there would be a period of time where I wouldn’t want to work.

Women who put family ﬁ rst still face social and personal pressures to

establish an identity beyond those of wife and mother. At twenty-ﬁ ve, Steph-
anie was prepared to settle for less than she once expected, but she was not
prepared to relinquish all her aspirations:

One expectation, when I was younger, was I’d have my own business.
Now, I don’t know if I’ll ever ﬁ nd the career—or have the time to have
the career—that I wanted or was meant for. But I do need to have
something for myself, whether it’s part-time work or something that
I enjoy.

These neotraditional women are juggling the pressure to be a devoted

mother with the pressure to help with family ﬁ nances and claim a separate
self. In searching for ways to ﬁ t work into their lives without upsetting the
domestic balance, they deﬁ ne domesticity as a “time-out,” not a way of life.

Scaling Back

Some women scaled back on earlier ambitions, while others could not take
advantage of opportunities when they arose. After several years in the corpo-
rate world, Lauren gave up on climbing the corporate ladder:

I became very motivated when I was in high school and just knew that
I wanted a lot, but lately I ﬁ gure I’ll do something for a while, but
never be the vice president of the company or something.

Dolores did not set out to move up, but her intelligence, dedication, and

energy won her a promotion out of the secretarial ranks. But when her job as
an executive coordinator required travel that took too much time away from
her children, she reluctantly moved back to a lower rung:

I was doing secretarial work, and then I was a program coordinator.
I loved the job. No matter what job I’m in, I bring home work, but the
travel time was just too much, and I needed to be closer to my children.
So I took a downgrade and became a secretary again. It was a change
to a better location, even if it meant making a sacriﬁ ce. But hopefully
something will go through, and I won’t be a secretary anymore.

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To offset these sacriﬁ ces, neotraditional women deﬁ ne success as the whole

package of family and work, not just moving up an organizational chart.

For Mariela, the well-being of her children and family meant as much as the
size of her paycheck:

Successful would be the whole marriage thing, kids, a home of my
own. I wouldn’t have to be successful in my job, because the family
comes ﬁ rst—but that I get a good job—meaning I’m getting paid
enough to live comfortably with my family.

This deﬁ nition of success offers the silver lining of “choice.” While a

neotraditional strategy might constrain the chance to move up, women hope
it might expand the chance for work with more intrinsically rewarding pay-
offs.

In lieu of a substantial paycheck, Karen planned to take a job only if

and when the right conditions were present:

If I do work when I have kids, I want it to be on my own terms. If
I have opportunities to work in stuff that I enjoy, then I would like to
work, but I’d also like to have time to be with the children.

Just a Time-Out

Though resigned to scaling back, even neotraditional women hope to hold
onto work ties in the long run. In contrast to the June Cleavers and Harriet
Nelsons of 1950s nostalgia, they deﬁ ne any time they might take off as tem-
porary.

For Mariela, taking a “time-out” from the workplace offered a way

to parent intensively before eventually establishing a career:

I would like to be there when they’re growing up. I want to see them
take their ﬁ rst walk. Later on, I’ll go back to work. They’re only young
for so long.

Kristen even planned to weave back and forth from medical school to

stay-at-home motherhood to postgraduate medical training:

I don’t think I’m going to work continuously. I want to go to medical
school, and when the child’s three or four, do my residency.

Others hope to interweave part-time work with motherhood rather than

discontinue work altogether.

They seek jobs not requiring long days at the

ofﬁ ce. Nicole planned to work at home:

Hopefully, I can write and be there. I feel very strongly about being
there the ﬁ rst ﬁ ve or six years. I think it’s very important, and I don’t
believe in full-time help.

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Stephanie wanted to blend work with caretaking by working fewer hours:

As long as ﬁ nancially I don’t have to, I won’t work a nine-to-ﬁ ve job.
But I want to put myself in a situation where I can do something, even
if that means getting some part-time help with the children when I’m
working.

not déjà vu all over again

Since the conﬂ icts between work and family life have intensiﬁ ed, it is not
surprising that a sizeable minority prefer to fall back on domesticity rather
than economic autonomy.

Faced with intransigent workplaces, resistant

partners, and pressures to pour time and energy into child rearing, it is sur-
prising that more women are not pursuing this course.

Lynne felt she had

little choice in a world with so few alternatives:

It sounds nice to say, “We share everything equally,” but I don’t think
that’s realistic. So children are my ﬁ rst priority. I’m sure it will wind
up being like that. It’s just the way society is.

Neotraditionalism offers some a better alternative than self-reliance, but

it also represents a reluctant scaling back of earlier aspirations. Karen grudg-
ingly came to the conclusion she could not do it all:

I think family might come ﬁ rst, and then work. I have this image of
not working when I have kids, which is funny because of my mom.
I hate to think that I’m staying home, but there is a sense of having
to compromise.

Women who stress the primacy of mothering recognize the forces moving

other women toward self-reliance, and these concerns also prompt them to
search for ways to integrate work into their lives. They seek a compromise
between intensive parenting and rigid, demanding jobs by retaining the
hope of ultimately establishing strong work ties and even a career. They also
expect their partners to “help” at home, even if they retain primary responsi-
bility. Stephanie explained:

With his position, he’s home four days. So even though ﬁ nancially
he’ll be the primary breadwinner, he’ll still have a big part at home.
Just from the way he was brought up, I don’t think he would be happy
any other way.

Falling back on domesticity does not signal a return to the 1950s fam-

ily. It reﬂ ects a desire—and need—to refashion this model to ﬁ t the social

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and economic exigencies of the twenty-ﬁ rst century. Even the most tradi-
tional women seek to include some of the advantages work bestows while also
avoiding the dual burden that can overwhelm those trying to “do it all.”

Blurring Boundaries, Uncertain Futures

Torn between high hopes and deepening doubts, young women are pioneering
new strategies for navigating the future. Whether they prefer self- reliance or
neotraditionalism, the overwhelming majority of my interviewees (83 percent)
agree they have it better than their mothers or grandmothers. But they also
take these improvements with a grain of salt. For Connie, the forces of change
have created both unprecedented options and difﬁ cult new pressures:

We have it better in that we have more freedom, more independence,
more rights, but worse because a lot more is expected of us. When
people ﬁ nd out I stay home, they look at me as less of a person. But
when they enter the working environment, women still have to work
twice as hard to get the same recognition as men. I know I did.

New options have grown alongside persisting obstacles to equality and a

lack of institutional supports for combining work and parenting. The clash
between demographic shifts and institutional rigidity has created contra-
dictions of work and marriage in addition to the contradictions of mother-
hood documented by Sharon Hays. In an ironic twist, middle-class married
women with good job opportunities and access to high-quality child care
are chastised for pursuing careers, while poor single mothers with few job
prospects and limited child care are required to take marginal jobs.

The

implied message is that women should not depend on others for their liveli-
hood, but they also should not work for personal satisfaction or compete for
the best jobs. These cultural and structural contradictions leave all women
facing unavoidable double binds, where any strategy poses inescapable con-
ﬂ icts. Neither self-reliance nor domesticity can provide an ideal solution to
women’s search for both personal independence and lasting bonds. Theresa,
who is married and combining full-time work with rearing two children,
felt frustrated that any choice leaves her facing social disapproval and per-
sonal uncertainty:

They’re pushing you to work, but they’re not secure with what’s going
on in day care. Either way, you’re messed up. Sometimes I feel like,
“What do they want from us?”

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Monique, who is rearing two young sons on her own and trying to ﬁ nd a

job, agreed:

I shouldn’t have to stay home, but I wished we were in a society where
I could stay home. You shouldn’t have to do the impossible, and that’s
just what I’m doing. I’m making the impossible possible.

In this “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” situation, young

women focus on different dangers and are developing different strategies for
navigating the future. Most view self-reliance as their best protection against
the pitfalls of traditional marriage. Coming from all backgrounds, they have
learned this lesson from their mothers, other women, and their own experi-
ences. To secure what they deem to be indispensable economic, social, and
emotional resources, they are establishing ﬁ rm ties to paid work, redesign-
ing motherhood to ﬁ t their work aspirations, and looking to kin and friends
to enlarge their support and, if needed, cushion the absence of an enduring
intimate partnership.

Since job and marital opportunities differ by class and race, these differ-

ences give self-reliant strategies a different cast. Well-educated women, who
hope to establish a promising career, are more likely to postpone motherhood
and to expect sufﬁ cient ﬁ nancial resources to purchase paid help, but they are
also more likely to worry about the time demands of high-status occupations.
Working-class and poorer women, with fewer job opportunities, are more
likely to become young mothers and to rely on an extended network of rela-
tives and friends. In some sense, African-American women, who overwhelm-
ingly seek self-reliance regardless of their educational level and class position,
are the cutting edge of this change.

Yet despite the differences between rich and poor, single and married, and

Black, Asian, Latino, and white, women’s self-reliant strategies share core
elements: work is essential; marriage is optional and reversible; relationships
should leave room for autonomy; and good mothering includes earning a liv-
ing and sharing care. These strategies do not preclude ﬁ nding a life partner,
but they come with high standards for choosing one. Despite the media-
driven image of young women turning back the historical clock, large num-
bers seek new ways to survive, thrive, and establish an independent identity,
whether or not they are also able to forge a lasting bond.

Alongside this general trend, however, a notable minority prefer to fall

back on domesticity. These women would rather resolve work-family con-
ﬂ icts by making a traditional compromise than by living without a partner
or trying to do it all. The needs of children, the inﬂ exible demands of the
workplace, the lack of child care, and the difﬁ culties of ﬁ nding an equally

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involved partner make domesticity more appealing. Yet, tipping their own
hat to the attractions of new options, domestically inclined women still want
to ﬁ t paid jobs into their lives. They, too, are trying to ﬁ nd a less rigidly gen-
dered balance between home and work.

Despite their differences, both fallback positions involve signiﬁ cant

costs for young women. Domesticity, even in the form of neotraditionalism,
requires forgone opportunities at work and consequent ﬁ nancial vulnerabil-
ity. Women who drop out of the workforce, even for short periods, pay a large
long-term economic penalty, and the model of a career as full-time, uninter-
rupted work continues to leave women, and especially mothers, at a disad-
vantage.

Yet self-reliance risks loneliness along with the weight of doing it

all. Most women want to enjoy the beneﬁ ts of enduring commitment, but
they do not want marriage to entail working twice as hard.

Aware of these dilemmas, young women know any outlook, no matter

how fervently held, may change as their circumstances change. In the face of
this uncertainty, they have learned to remain ﬂ exible. Miranda’s shifting fam-
ily circumstances left her ready to adapt to unforeseeable developments:

With my father, I learned we had no chance of making plans because
who knows if they were going to happen. I’ve been doing it for so
long, I couldn’t live without that. So I keep it really ﬂ exible.

Sarah, reﬂ ecting on her own lesbian relationship, drew a similar lesson

from her parents’ resistance to change:

My parents had to live with the bad consequences ’cause they were not
willing to change. They probably didn’t feel they were able to change,
but they’re a generation back.

The search for self-reliance and the turn toward neotraditionalism are

both less-than-ideal alternatives. Whether married or single, employed or
at home, women are walking on a common ground that may shift without
warning and propel them in new directions.

c h a p t e r s e v e n

Men’s Resistance to Equal Sharing

hile gender inequities may explain why young women prepare
for “second best” options, men are not immune from similar con-

cerns. The increased fragility of marriage, growing time demands and inse-
curities at work, and women’s rising standards for a relationship all confront
men with new dilemmas of their own. Though men’s responses may differ,
they also face options likely to fall short of their ideals.

Young men share women’s doubts about their chances of striking a good

balance between earning and caring, but they experience this conﬂ ict in a
different way. If women worry about the economic, social, and psychological
risks of depending too much on someone else, men are more apprehensive
about their ﬁ nancial ability to support others. And if women worry about
having to assume the lion’s share of family caretaking whether or not they
marry or have a paid job, men face rising pressures to do more at home and
earn more at work if they do marry.

Perceiving different obstacles, men form different fallback strategies.

Uneasy about the price equality might exact, seven out of ten men look to
modiﬁ ed traditionalism, in which they retain the position of a family’s main
breadwinner while also granting their partner the right, and need, to work. If
equality proves impossible or just too costly, these men seek to preserve some
distinct gender divisions that most women resist.

The minority of men who do not fall back on modiﬁ ed traditionalism

share women’s skepticism about traditional marriage. In contrast to women
who are preparing to do it all on their own, however, these men are more
likely to emphasize freedom from family obligations. Anxious about achiev-
ing a cultural ideal equating “being a man” with supporting a family, they

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stress self-reliance as a route to autonomy more than to connectedness. These
men are drawn to the freedom side of the tension between commitment and
freedom. This tension has pervaded American culture since its inception as a
frontier society, but it takes a special form in a world where men face declin-
ing economic opportunities and expanding options to reject marriage.

This

mix of new constraints and opportunities has increased the lure of autonomy,
especially for men who doubt they can live up to the cultural injunction to be
a breadwinner or the rising pressure to take on more responsibility at home.

Faced with different options and fears, men are adopting fallback strate-

gies that clash with women’s. Yet men’s outlooks, no less than women’s, reﬂ ect
the need to pursue second-best scenarios because more desirable options seem
out of reach. Most men, like most women, prefer a more egalitarian, ﬂ exible
balance between breadwinning and caretaking. Their aspirations are con-
verging, even if their strategies do not.

It’s Hard to Do It All

Today’s young men face an uncertain economic landscape and rising expec-
tations for equality in relationships. Each may be a cause for concern, but
together, these forces create conﬂ icting pressures. They press men to give more
time and energy to both work and family, leaving most to wonder if they can
succeed—or even survive—in their jobs or at home. Indeed, a recent study of
the American workforce found that 45 percent of employed men report expe-
riencing either “some” or “a lot” of work-life conﬂ ict (compared to 34 percent
in 1977), and among men in dual-earner couples, that number rises to
almost 60 percent.

Like these men, Adam worried about whether he could

pursue a medical career and also live up to his father’s example as an involved
parent as well as a successful dentist and good provider:

I would like to think I’m gonna earn enough money to live a nice life,
[but] I’m afraid of not doing as well as my father—either career-wise
or family-wise.

Although Mitch’s dad was a psychologist who spent plenty of time at

home, his own job in banking left him doubtful about the chances of ﬁ nding
work that would allow a similar balance and still ensure a steady income:

[My dad] certainly set a good example, a paradigm model if you want
to call it. In the ideal world, I’d love to work until 4:00, 4:30, then
spend time with my family. I want my children to have a real father as

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161

opposed to someone who just kisses them good night. I’d like to have
a fairly equal balance, kind of like my dad, but it would be tough to
attain because a lot of careers are downsizing, and they want you to
work weekends and around the clock.

Men also face new pressures for involvement at home. Although acknowl-

edging the loss, in Sam’s words, of a “get out of housework free” card, most
focus more on the obstacles to building an equal relationship. Chris hoped to
re-create his father’s ﬂ exible approach, but feared striking such a balance in
his own life would be arduous and costly:

I thought you could have just a relationship, and I’ve learned that
you’ve got to be able to draw that line. It’s a difﬁ cult thing. And that
would be my fear—where am I cutting into my job too much, where
am I cutting into the relationship too much, and how do I divide it,
and can it actually be done at all?

Lawrence knew even the most rewarding domestic activities would place

limits on his independence:

A large part of me wants to have the picket fence, big house, big fam-
ily, and coach the Little League team and be the head of PTA. And
then there’s the other side that wants a lot more freedom.

These cross-pressures have raised the stakes on men, leaving them skepti-

cal about whether they can live up to their own ideals or the expectations of
others. Reﬂ ecting on his hard-working Chinese parents’ struggle to keep the
family aﬂ oat, even though they relied on two incomes, Justin blamed the
economy:

You don’t want to be in a situation where in order to put food on
the table, you can’t meet the child’s needs in another way. I have a
high standard. I don’t want to be a sloppy father. So it’s a conundrum.
I don’t think it’s as simple as it was in the past.

Joel pointed to his own “high standards,” and especially his hope to avoid

the pitfalls of his parents’ unhappy traditional marriage, but he agreed his goal
of equal parenting was on a collision course with successful breadwinning:

I feel sometimes that my standards are too high, and I want it all,
and it’s just not reasonable or feasible in this world. I don’t feel I’m as
strong a person as that situation would require—someone who is on
top of everything and sort of a superman. It doesn’t really seem like I’d
be able to keep up that pace.

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Young men face trade-offs that mirror those facing women. Like women,

they believe the ideal work-family balance will have to give way to a fallback
scenario, but men are inclined to fall back on emphasizing their breadwin-
ning rights and duties. Josh felt strongly that, despite his professed support
for equality, he could not surrender his duty to be the primary earner:

I’ll work as hard as I could to support them. I just think it’s a respon-
sibility. It conﬂ icts with what I said about women, but that’s just
something I feel—that a man’s ﬁ rst responsibility is to take care of his
family. I know it’s kind of contradictory.

Matthew agreed:

I want family life to be the most important thing. If I could have the ideal
world, I’d like to have a partner who’s making as much as I am—someone
who’s ambitious and likes to achieve. [But] if it can’t be equal, I would be
the breadwinner and be there for helping with homework at night.

Yet not all men agree with this view. Some seek more independence than a

traditional marriage allows. They neither want to submit to the strictures of
conventional jobs nor hope to ﬁ nd a domestically oriented partner. Divorced
and on his own in his late twenties, Nick vowed to avoid his father’s nine-
to-ﬁ ve routine:

I don’t want to end up being your every day, run-of-the-mill Joe
Commuter, like those uptight people who worry about this bill and
that. I don’t want to be stuck in one place for twenty-ﬁ ve years. I want
to do it my way.

Men’s fallback positions reverse rather than mimic women’s. Though

women disproportionately favor self-reliance, men favor more traditional pat-
terns. They are prone to stress their own economic responsibilities and pre-
rogatives, even if a marriage contains two earners.

Figures 7.1 and 7.2 show

that a majority of men from all types of backgrounds prefer breadwinning
as a fallback, although African-Americans, Latinos, and those from single-
parent homes and working-class or poor families are more evenly divided. For
these groups, who continue to face more constricted job opportunities, lower
rates of educational attainment, and higher incarceration rates, a larger pro-
portion stress freedom from breadwinning, even in the context of an intimate
relationship (including slightly more than a third of African-American and
Latino men, and close to half of men from single-parent homes).

Because men face different options than women, their versions of both

traditionalism and self-reliance also differ. For men, traditionalism means

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Single
parent

Dual earner

Traditional

Middle &

upper

middle

Working

class &

poor

All men

Self-reliant

Neotraditional

f i g u r e 7 . 1 Men’s fallback positions, by family background and class.

White

African-American

Latino

All men

Self-reliant

Neotraditional

f i g u r e 7 . 2 Men’s fallback positions, by ethnic background.

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t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

taking on the privileges and responsibilities of primary breadwinning, while
self-reliance means not being responsible for the care and feeding of a family.
Yet even though young men’s fallback positions differ from women’s, they
are “second best” strategies nonetheless.

Falling Back on Breadwinning

Like women who look to domesticity, men who fall back on breadwinning
place marriage and family at the center of their plans. For men, this means
being a good provider. Parental examples, lessons on the job, and experiences
in relationships have convinced them that, when push comes to shove, they
need to take responsibility for their family’s ﬁ nancial welfare. Some view
breadwinning as a privilege, while others see it as an obligation, but they all
agree that no matter what the gender revolution prescribes, it is still para-
mount for men to earn a living and support their families, which also implies
taking a backseat as a caregiver.

fathers’ ambiguous models

Since over three-quarters of men from both traditional and dual-earner homes,
as well as over half of those from single-parent homes, plan to fall back on
breadwinning, fathers’ choices do not predict sons’ strategies. Most harbor
mixed reactions to their fathers’ choices, but nevertheless see breadwinning
as the most reasonable alternative.

Men who grew up in two-parent homes had ambivalent reactions to

their parents’ arrangements, whether their mothers stayed home or had
paid jobs. Jonathan did not share his father’s attraction to “the traditional
thing”:

I don’t want or feel it’s right to have a traditional one like my parents,
where I was the only one working. Having such a simple, standard,
pretty traditional upbringing, I wish it had been more challeng-
ing.

Justin had no desire to become an overworked and disengaged parent like

his father:

I don’t want to have the type of relationship my father had with me.
You get home at 7:00, 7:30. You’re wiped out, and [the kids] are ready
for bed. That’s the greatest fear.

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165

Neither wished to repeat his father’s pattern, yet both expected to become

primary breadwinners. In the end, they agreed it would be wrong to forfeit the
“good provider” mantle or rely on a wife’s income, as Jonathan explained:

I like an even relationship, but if it got to the situation where my wife
didn’t want to work, I need to be able to support [her].

And Justin added:

I saw how hard [my mom] worked, and I didn’t feel that was right, so
this is the way I’m changing from what my dad did. I realize it’s not
perfect, and maybe it’s paternalistic, but because of the way I grew up,
I feel I need to be in a situation where I can take care of her, provide
for her.

Sons were even more conﬂ icted when their fathers abandoned the fam-

ily. Close to half shared women’s skepticism about marriage, but the other
half agreed with Hank, whose father’s departure strengthened his resolve to
become a responsible family man:

I’m not afraid to be in a relationship or get married. It’s number one.
I think I learned that from my father, from his saying “I’m gonna
go get cigarettes,” and not seeing him till three years later. So I’ll be
faithful.

Over two-thirds of men reared in a traditional or dual-earner home

fell back on breadwinning, yet their enthusiasm is muted. Even men with
successful breadwinning fathers were mindful of the dangers. Paul wor-
ried about repeating his father’s pattern of overwork as a lawyer for an oil
company:

I didn’t want to go into the corporate world because I saw what it
did to my father. He worked all the time. So I realized early on that
I didn’t want to do that. Unfortunately, I think I’m developing a lot
more of these ambitious feelings that I saw in my father growing up
and I disliked. I think it’s closely tied to the economic comforts that
provides.

Although overwork did not concern Manny, he realized he might be

unable to support a family on the modest earnings his construction worker
father relied on:

Life is scary today, because I know she’s my responsibility and the
mother of my child.

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the pull of the workplace

In a world that questions whether a man who does not carry his own economic
weight is “marriageable,” having children, a family, and even love seems to hinge
on the ability to bring home a “big enough” paycheck.

As Jonathan put it:

Success is getting to the point where you can say, “I’ve got this great
marriage, great kids, this is what I do with my life.” But a lot of it’s
ﬁ nancial—to be able to provide for my family, like I got provided for.

Men from all class backgrounds measured success in market terms.

Although those who plan to fall back on autonomy are skeptical about the
chances of earning a “good living,” most men counted on jobs to ease the way
to primary breadwinning. Work opportunities, often invisible or taken for
granted, pulled these men into the workplace and away from home. Their
routes differ by class and ethnic background, but everyone who turned toward
breadwinning focused on their economic prospects.

Invisible Opportunities

Middle-class men largely assumed from an early age that they would enter
a demanding occupational niche, while those from more modest economic
backgrounds generally took more winding, ambiguous paths. Growing up in
an afﬂ uent suburb, Adam’s professional aspirations emerged early and never
wavered:

I always wanted to be a professional. I would never settle for second-
best. Even today, it makes me crazy if I don’t do as well as I could
have—ﬁ nancially, in a career. That’s something that won’t go away,
and it’s my own pressure.

In contrast, Ray, an African-American from a working-class home, became

an enthusiastic worker only after he joined the lower ranks of the prison sys-
tem and rose unexpectedly into management:

I would do just enough to pass school, but I found out I love work. I became
a manager, and I’m so gung ho. So I’m not gonna abuse my job.

Few men attributed their improving prospects to having a gender advan-

tage, but there continues to be an “invisible inequality” in women’s and
men’s occupational opportunities that still allows some men, especially if
they are non-Hispanic whites, to “coast” in school and still succeed at work.

On average, men continue to earn more than women and to outpace them
in professional careers, despite the fact that women are more likely to go to

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167

college, earn a college degree, and report studying more and relaxing less.

Yet over the long run, most men can still expect to outearn their female peers,
and among people with a four-year college degree, the gap between men’s
and women’s pay has actually widened slightly since the mid-1990s.

But

even those men who drifted through school did not notice these advantages
when they found their careers taking off. Jim never liked studying, barely
graduated from high school, and dropped out of college after one semester.
Yet after “kind of falling into” a job in the court system, he rose up the civil
service ladder. Beginning at the “bottom of the barrel” as a guard, he rose to
a “supervisory level” by his late twenties and expected to keep moving up:

What I’m doing, it’s pretty much the ideal. I came in as an ofﬁ cer,
and now I’m a supervisor. My pay has gone up pretty much within
a couple of years. I don’t have a college degree, [but] there are a lot
of people with college degrees who don’t use them. As far as getting
ahead, I make more money than my sister, who’s an accountant. So I
feel very positive about my career. I see myself on the path, and I want
to get ahead as far as possible.

Whether anticipated or unexpected, promising careers offer reassurance

about the chances of succeeding at breadwinning. But this reassurance comes
with a cost, since the demands required to build a career also undermine the
chances of striking a balance between work and home.

No Time for “Equal Time”

As ﬁ nancial rewards accrue at work, the heavy time investments required
to sustain them make it harder to balance work with the rest of life. The
paradigm of a committed worker as someone who works full-time—and
overtime—for decades, with no time-outs or even cutting back, creates what
Joan Williams calls a “maternal wall” for women, but it leaves men with a
shrinking window for sharing at home.

Jim believed the need to work “full-

time, all the time” meant that, faced with a choice, he would have to spend
more time at work:

Even though I didn’t go to school a lot, you can get by in school with-
out being there every day. But now it’s different. How are you gonna
get ahead if you’re not at work? So if somebody’s gonna be the bread-
winner, it’s going to be me. I always feel the need to work.

New economic uncertainties have raised the stakes even higher, making

workweeks that extend well beyond forty hours typical in the most demand-
ing professions.

In a “winner take all” economy with less room at the top,

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high- and lesser-earning men alike feel uneasy about taking time away from
work.

Despite Justin’s early ﬁ nancial accomplishments, he felt compelled to

work harder and longer just to stay even:

This society, there’s no security. So for a twenty-eight-year-old, I’m
successful, but I look around and there are plenty of young people
who are successful, too. I’m not the smartest, the brightest, the best,
or whatever. So if I’m ahead, then I make a new goal. Once you stop
doing it, you start to slide. So everything’s relative.

Inexorably escalating job demands, along with intensifying competition

for occupational rewards, leave primary breadwinning men with little hope
of striking an equal work-family balance. Peter became pessimistic about the
possibilities for either balance or equality:

The biggest challenge is the balance between work and home. I want
as even a split as it could be, but with my hours, I don’t think it would
be very even . . . because work will be very difﬁ cult.

Chris became increasingly wary of a two-career marriage:

Two careers, it’s gonna be very difﬁ cult. I see it with the director of
our lab. They’re both professionals—she’s an executive, and I see how
he comes in so tired because his wife had to go do her presentation. So
I’ve seen how tricky it gets. It really can run you haggard.

Most greet the prospect of putting so much time into a job with ambiva-

lence and wistfulness. Justin longed to leave his fast-paced corporate career
to become a teacher, but felt unable to resist the pressure to “make very good
money” for his family:

If it weren’t for money, I would like to be a teacher and live a quiet life.
But it’s not possible, I’m beginning to realize, because of the ﬁ nancial
needs. The more likely scenario [is] I would have to continue in this
line of work. I don’t feel there’s a choice, really.

moving toward marriage

In contrast to self-reliant women, who are skeptical of marriage, bread-
winning men are drawn to its beneﬁ ts. Like women, they are postponing
marriage, but most (though certainly not all, as we shall see) view marriage
as a goal they want and expect to reach. Some breadwinning men never
questioned the attraction of marriage, while others overcame doubts as they

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169

grew older. Many were surprised to see their skepticism melt. Ray changed
his outlook after a brief but intense period of “wildness”:

I always wanted to have kids, but I didn’t want to get married. Then
I started quieting down. At twenty-one, I already had money, had
traveled, done the wild things. I was tired.

Daniel vowed to be a responsible husband and father after watching his

“wilder” brother make mistakes:

Scott’s the divorced one, but he’s much different than I am. When he
got married, he still wanted to be a drinker and a partyer. That was
his problem. I’ve already gotten rid of those things, so I don’t see that
being my problem.

Supportive partners also help skeptical men develop a more sanguine view

of lasting commitment. Carlos felt fortunate, if surprised, when his girlfriend
gave him hope for creating the happy marriage that eluded his parents:

I was always like, “I’m not ever gonna get married.” With her, I can
see myself getting married, having kids. She’s a real close friend. It’s
better than my parents, ’cause even when it comes to a point where
we’re about to disagree, we talk instead of argue.

William went even further. Though he enjoyed the advantages of middle-

class afﬂ uence, he once feared his life had no direction or purpose. But creat-
ing a “real” relationship with his ﬁ ancée gave William a newfound faith in
himself. At twenty-eight, he marveled at how their relationship had helped
him ﬁ nd his way and had given him optimism about the future:

The course of my life, the past eleven years have not gone the way
I think my life ought to have gone. I dropped out of college, diddled
around doing this and that. So I’m lucky to be where I am now, just
ﬁ nishing my bachelor’s degree. Lindsey is very assertive and has taught
me a lot . . . I’m learning to believe in myself in a real way. I was really
unhappy for a long time, but now I’m really happy. Dealing in a more
real way with another person in a relationship, a lot of what I went
through is getting self-conﬁ dence and learning to believe in myself.
I look forward to my future, and I’m sure it’s going to be great. You’ve
got to understand, it comes after years of dread. You know, I’m never
gonna have a midlife crisis.

Eduardo grew up in a working-class Latino home, where neither parent

had gone to college, but he had a similar story to tell:

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I met Mary six years ago. [It made] a big difference. If it wasn’t for her,
I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be lost, dreaming somewhere. She’s
come through with me. She’s made me feel really good about myself.
She’s really important to me and really wants to stay with me.

Supportive partners not only fuel optimism about work and marriage;

they also help men anchor their identity in breadwinning by providing
moral and practical support. As Manny put it, “I know she’s the one ’cause
I love the way she takes care of me.” For men who fall back on breadwin-
ning, marriage is as a package of commitments that promises intimacy,
love, emotional sustenance, and social status. In fact, contemporary men are
generally less skeptical about marriage and parenthood than women, who
are more supportive of childlessness and hold more cautious views about
marriage.

Men’s more optimistic outlook is well founded, since married

men enjoy a range of personal and social beneﬁ ts, including better health
and higher earnings. Not only do married men do better than single men at
work, but fathers are more likely than childless men to be hired and offered
higher salaries.

Ken sensed this advantage when his previous boss, who

had remained single well into his thirties, offered an unappealing contrast
to his current boss, whose “perfect family” seemed integral to his workplace
success:

My former employer, I don’t want to be like that. He’s about thirty-six
and never been married. My current employer is more of a role model.
He’s got two daughters, a pretty wife, up there in the company, very
advanced. He’s a great guy, too.

Marriage is clearly associated with beneﬁ ts for men, but it is difﬁ cult to

disentangle cause and effect. Does marriage confer advantages, or are healthier,
more successful men more likely to marry? In either case, marriage and parent-
hood help men in myriad ways. At work, they enjoy a wage bonus, and in pri-
vate life, they are less vulnerable to disease and have larger social networks.

Most young men sense this link and hope to create it for themselves.

from parenting to mothering

Where do children ﬁ t into time-demanding jobs? This question poses the
biggest challenge to the ideal of equal sharing. Most agree with Paul, who
“always envisioned two earners, but that would obviously be a problem when
children start coming into the picture.” To resolve this conundrum, bread-
winning men distinguish between “equal but different” forms of caring.

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171

They profess support for the ideal of equal parenting, but they fall back on the
practical advantages of devoted mothering.

Only a Parent Will Do

With few exceptions, neotraditional men do not believe mothers are inher-
ently more qualiﬁ ed than fathers to care for children; but they do believe par-
ents are inherently more qualiﬁ ed than other caregivers. While Eric assumed
mothers and fathers should be equally responsible for children’s care, he did
not feel caretaking should be delegated:

I would primarily like it to be a family member—either one of us.
I would like for the child to have one or both parents there at the
beginning.

Phil echoed this point:

If children come into the picture, that’s when I’ve got the old, tradi-
tional values—not that women should be home, but somebody—one
of the parents—should always be there to take care of the kids. Where
my part would come, I would deal with it then, but one of us would
always be at home.

In principle, a reluctance to rely on babysitters and day care centers does

not leave the bulk of parenting to women. Yet few men can envisage ﬁ nd-
ing two ﬂ exible full-time jobs or living on two part-time incomes. Phil
continued:

I would like to work certain days and she would work certain days.
This way, one of the parents is always there, and it’s not always the
same. I would like to work my schedule around my kids, but that’s
not going to happen.

Although the reluctance to delegate coexists with egalitarian principles,

its practical implication makes equality close to impossible. Without the
option to divide child care equally, neotraditional men look to their partners
to pick up an added share of the load.

Market Work and the Gender of Caretaking

Most men feel justiﬁ ed in leaving mothers as the default caretaker because
they assume their own market advantages mean their work needs to come
ﬁ rst.

Although women’s yearly earnings, as a percent of men’s, have risen

from 64 percent in 1955 to 78 percent in 2008, husbands continue to
outearn wives in most marriages. Some embrace this circumstance, while

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others regret it, but they all see it as unavoidable. Justin felt his wife’s lower
earnings as a freelance writer deprived them both of the option to be equal
caretakers:

She doesn’t want to have babysitters, and I agree. If she was in a job
that pulls down the same type of money, then either of us could quit.
But we don’t, so the problem is I have to work, unless she can get
another job.

Jim, on the other hand, believed his higher earnings and better job pros-

pects justiﬁ ed an arrangement his wife, a math teacher, did not prefer:

This may sound sexist, but she’ll just have to take time off. As far as a
macho thing, if she made a much better salary, it would be different.
[But] she’s pretty much going to stay at that level, and I’m going to
move up as far as I can.

Whether or not they prefer the outcome, an earnings advantage and more

promising career prospects lends an air of inevitability to men’s reliance on
women’s caretaking. Yet almost every young man rejected the idea of staying
at home, even if it were possible.

Josh felt it would be irresponsible for him

to rely on a woman’s paycheck, even if she could earn more:

I would never stay home. I have a friend who’s like that, and I strongly
disapprove. The father just stays home. I think it’s wrong, ’cause his
wife’s out there working seven days a week, and he’s doing nothing
except stay home.

Hank agreed:

I can’t sit home and have a woman pay the bills. Sharing the child
care—I would do it once I’m home, but the kids have to have some-
body to come home to. So if she makes more than me, then I’ll have
to get two jobs.

By equating responsible manhood with earning a “good enough” living,

breadwinning men relieve their partner of an economic weight that even
self-reliant women are reluctant to assume. Coupled with the resistance to
delegating child care, however, this view leads inexorably, if unconsciously,
to the assumption that a mother will take the main responsibility for the
care work. The ideal of intensive parenting becomes the need for mater-
nal responsibility. Engaged to be married, Manny moved seamlessly from
believing “only a parent will do” to assuming his ﬁ ancée would be the one
to do it:

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173

Especially at an early age, you don’t leave your child with anyone.
So she would have to take care of the baby, ’cause I wouldn’t like any-
body with my child and I’ll be working.

Breadwinning in an Age of Women’s Work

Though men face powerful incentives to fall back on breadwinning, they
cannot ignore the attendant conﬂ icts. Placing paid work ﬁ rst and counting
on someone else to do more of the domestic work complicates the search for
balance and ﬂ exibility, especially when most families need two incomes and
most women want to work.

This tension prompts neotraditional men to

develop mental strategies to resolve the clash. They refashion the core ideals
of work-family balance, equal sharing, and the importance of women’s work
to ﬁ t better their need to see themselves as breadwinners ﬁ rst.

balance is a state of mind

Breadwinning men have not relinquished the ideal of work-family balance,
but they hope to redeﬁ ne it. In contrast to self-reliant women, who expect to
combine work and parenting as best they can, and neotraditional women, who
expect to ﬁ t paid work around their family tasks, neotraditional men stress
how their earnings substitute for time and other forms of care. Patrick believed
being a good father means giving priority to ﬁ nancial contributions:

Ideally, my children would be more important than my job. But I need
to work to support my family.

Matthew also reluctantly focused on making money before spending time:

What premium are you going to put on having time or money? Cer-
tainly, to give your children any sort of chance takes material things.

To ﬁ t “balance” into this framework, some make a mental distinction

between time and personal priorities. For Thomas, what matters most is how
he feels, not what he actually does:

Time-wise, I spend a lot of time on work, so if you slice up the day into
a pie, I’ll spend more time at work than doing anything else. But in
terms of rank in signiﬁ cance, it’s ﬁ fty-ﬁ fty.

Others take a longer view, deﬁ ning “balance” as a sequence of changing

priorities. These men hope putting in long hours early in their careers will

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pave the way for more family involvement later on. Ken hoped to put work
ﬁ rst and then family:

After I’ve exhausted my corporate life and saved enough money, it
would be very nice to contribute to raising my child. Maybe then
[my wife] can work full-time, and I’ll go to school and raise the
child.

Matthew proposed a similar scenario:

I’d like to have it such that work dominates my life until my children
turn ﬁ ve, six, and then have work taper off such that by the time my
kids are in high school, I’ll have a job with complete ﬂ exibility.

By stressing the long-run nature of the work-family balance, breadwin-

ning men can focus on work in the short run. But these plans presume some-
one else will pick up the slack in the early stages of child rearing, when the
demands of both careers and children are especially intense. For Hank, this
meant his wife’s presence could stand in for his own:

I’d never want to work so much that the kids grow up and say,
“My father never spent time with me, and that’s why I’m a screwup.”
But if there’s someone who represents you at home and doing the same
thing I would, hopefully that makes up for it.

Neotraditionalism preserves some semblance of the idea of work-family

balance by adopting cognitive strategies that place men’s work ﬁ rst. Deﬁ ning
balance as a state of mind helps men resolve inner conﬂ icts between the ideal
of involved fatherhood and the reality of time-demanding jobs. Yet this strat-
egy leaves the underlying structure of work unchallenged, leaving genuine
balance beyond everyone’s grasp.

the place of women’s work

Most neotraditional men assume that wives and mothers should be able to
pursue careers and see their earnings as important and desirable.

Those who

fall back on breadwinning do not expect their partners to reject paid work.
Although Lucius hoped to be the primary earner, he did not expect or want
to be the only one:

I’m gonna make enough money so that I’ll be able to hold it down.
But I’d rather that we both work. It helps.

Brian agreed:

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175

It’s more on a man to bring home money, but it’s not bad if you have
the woman bringing home money, too. Otherwise, in twenty years,
you’ve been shelling out money for her.

These men walk a thin line in blending their support for working part-

ners with the image of themselves as good providers. They believe everyone
should have a work ethic, but they grant more value to their own paycheck.
A partner, they reason, can—and should—work, but not in the same way or
to the same degree.

Her Job Comes Second

Neotraditional men ﬁ nd value in women’s work as a source of income, a
protection from boredom, a marker of maturity, and an avenue of personal
and social esteem. They neither wish nor plan for their partner to stay home
over the long run. Yet even though they frown on full-time homemaking,
they nevertheless place women’s jobs in a different category than their own.
Like notions of women as a “reserve labor force,” they view a woman’s paid
work as something that can ebb and ﬂ ow depending on family needs.

Allen

expected to ﬁ nd a career-oriented partner, but hoped she would take time out
when children arrived:

Someone I knew would just stay home—that wouldn’t be my ﬁ rst
choice. I’d like to marry somebody who has a career. But I’d like it if
she stayed home for a few years.

Matthew planned for his partner to “shift down”:

I’d like to have a partner who’s making as much as I am—has a
high-powered job where we can put the money aside quickly. So by
the time we have a kid, she can shift down. Now she works with
the kids and spends her time working for the Humane Society or
whatever.

Seeing a partner’s career as “extra”—and less essential—helps men dis-

count the costs women (and all these men are heterosexual) bear by putting
work on the back burner, even temporarily. Peter argued that pulling back to
care for children would not exact a heavy price on his wife’s career as long as
it did not become a permanent arrangement:

She should work and just adjust her schedule after they’re born. After
the children reach a certain age, I would feel, if I were her, that if
I didn’t go on and pursue my own objectives, I would always feel that
I missed out on doing something.

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And even though Jim recognized the highly professional nature of

his wife’s accomplishments, he distinguished between her relatively ﬂ at
career ladder as a teacher and his own plans to move up the civil service
ladder:

She’s a professional woman and does very well at her job, so she would
go on forever. But to take a year or two off—it’s ﬁ ne, ’cause as a math
teacher, it’s not gonna be a problem. If she had a job that was more
demanding, it would be a bigger problem.

Placing women’s work second allows men to afﬁ rm a two-earner arrange-

ment without undermining their own identities as breadwinners. It also jus-
tiﬁ es holding her responsible for domestic work whether or not she holds a
job. Although Sam granted his partner the option to work, he did not give
himself an offsetting responsibility to share at home:

If she wanted to work, I would assume it’s her responsibility to drop
the kids off at grandma’s house or something. She’s in charge of the
kids. If she’s gonna work, ﬁ ne, but you still have responsibilities.

Given most women’s determination to preserve their autonomy through

paid work, it may be wishful thinking for these men to presume they can
ﬁ nd a partner willing to put work aside. As a short-run strategy, it neverthe-
less allows them to focus on their own economic prospects and identities as
family providers. These efforts make room for women’s work, but they also
represent a pattern that is well short of equal sharing.

deﬁ ning equality as “choice”

How do neotraditional men reconcile the ideal of equality with the iden-
tity of a good provider? Alex deﬁ ned equality as a malleable concept, whose
meaning can shift with changing circumstances:

I would like it to be egalitarian, but I don’t have a set deﬁ nition for
what an egalitarian relationship would be like. If she thought, “At
this point in my life, I don’t want to work, it’s more important to stay
home,” then that would be ﬁ ne for one person to do more work in
some respects.

Because these men believe they should, in Peter’s words, “be responsible

for the money,” they distinguish between a woman’s “choice” to work and
their own obligation to do so. Dwayne explained that equality means offering
a partner the choice not to work:

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If we’re struggling and you’re gonna lay around, then I can’t see that.
But if things is going as they’re supposed to and I’m making good
money, if you choose not to work, that’s on you.

Daniel sounded a similar theme:

It’s probably much easier for us to earn the money we’re gonna need if
both of us are working, but if somehow my job makes enough money,
my wife doesn’t have to work. As long as there’s enough money for the
family, then it doesn’t matter.

Using the language of choice as a frame for women’s work narrows men’s

work options but expands their leverage at home. The responsibility of being
the economic mainstay makes it easier to select which forms of domestic
work they prefer. It is thus telling that, over the last several decades, men’s
involvement in child care has risen more substantially than their participa-
tion in housework.

Lawrence, like most, distinguished between child care

and housework:

I can really imagine myself raising kids. It’s the housework-type stuff
I can’t imagine.

Mitch proposed a similar division:

I’d like sharing equally—certainly child raising and also ﬁ nancially.
I’d like my mate to be able to balance and maybe switch them, but I
do not want to do cooking.

Many also hope to resolve the potential conﬂ icts by delegating the least

appealing tasks to a third party. Delegating tasks once performed routinely
by wives and mothers is part of a long-term trend of outsourcing household
tasks, a process that has been under way since the workplace and children’s
schooling moved out of the private household.

Wayne viewed paid help as

a reasonable extension of this process and the best solution to contemporary
pressures:

We both gotta work, so I hope we get help. ’Cause I don’t want my
wife to be working and doing housework chores. And I don’t want to
be doing it. I did enough of that already.

While self-reliant women deﬁ ne equality as their right to seek indepen-

dence, breadwinning men typically use the language of choice to distinguish
between a partner’s option to work and their own obligation to do so. This
frame allows men to reconcile the abstract ideal of equal sharing with the

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real difﬁ culties of putting it into practice, but it also re-creates gender
boundaries by preserving personal discretion about how—and how much—
to participate at home.

plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose?

Breadwinning men stress the importance of paternal involvement, but
they redeﬁ ne work-family balance as a state of mind. They are prepared to
ﬁ nd a work-committed partner, but they expect her to place work in the
background if and when needed. They value equality, but frame working
as optional for women and their own domestic participation as a matter of
choice. These strategies reafﬁ rm men’s moral responsibility to support a fam-
ily while also helping them reconcile the ideals of involved fatherhood and
equal sharing with their identity as a good provider. But they also imply that
women should be ready and willing to do it all, as Lucius explained:

I want a woman who knows how to do everything if she has to. She can
be independent and domestic at the same time. Independent means a
career-minded woman, and domestic means she knows how to take
care of home stuff.

Isaiah put it this way:

Let’s say I don’t get to that point where I can do it alone, then depending
on the situation, I would know that person [can] go either way, what-
ever they decide. That’s why they have to be independent.

By softening the gender boundaries of previous eras without erasing

them, these men have developed a neotraditional vision that grants some
gender ﬂ exibility without surrendering gender distinctions. If most women
do not ﬁ nd this “equal, but different” perspective reassuring, most men view
it as an unavoidable consequence of circumstances beyond their control. As
Lucius acknowledged, “I wouldn’t like it if the shoe was on the other foot,
but there’s a lot of things in life that’s unfair.”

The same forces pushing and pulling women toward self-reliance prevent

a commensurate shift among men toward domesticity. Men, no less than
women, understand that market work must come ﬁ rst—not just for survival,
but also for self-respect.

Because paid work bestows social status as well as

economic rewards, few men can sidestep the pressure to measure their own
worth in terms of market value. Those who try to resist must cope with per-
vasive social cues reminding them of its importance. Since care work remains
devalued and largely invisible, market logic leaves men with little incentive

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or opportunity to shift the balance.

Despite a professed desire for change,

neotraditional men see little alternative to placing the demands of work and
the validation it provides before the ideal of equal sharing.

Autonomy through Men’s Eyes

Not all men stress primary breadwinning as their fallback strategy. About
three in ten of the men I interviewed are wary of marriage as an institu-
tion, feel reluctant to assume economic responsibility for another adult, and
ﬁ nd a general, if vague, vision of personal freedom more appealing. Thomas
contrasted his ideal of a fulﬁ lling relationship with a path that looked
achievable:

My ideal is [to] go through life [with] no philandering, committed
to the relationship, going for a decent relationship—no yelling on
the sidewalk every day on my way to work. But if not, then I see
myself sitting on the beach in the Caribbean, with a swizzle stick in
my glass.

While these men do not all plan a life of travel and leisure, they all agree

adulthood does not require supporting another adult. As Gabriel put it,
“I refuse to support somebody. If I have a kid, yes, but I refuse to support a
wife.” They stress independence from and autonomy within relationships.

Like self-reliant women, autonomous men resist the breadwinner-

homemaker ethic, even in a neotraditional form. Yet they differ from their
female counterparts in crucial ways. Self-reliance offers women protection
against the dangers of ceding one’s personal identity and economic security
to another; autonomy provides men with insulation from the perils of too
much ﬁ nancial responsibility. Skepticism about ﬁ nding secure work and
growing doubts about traditional marriage set them on this path.

economic uncertainty and the lure
of singlehood

In contrast to the “invisible opportunities” pulling neotraditional men toward
time-demanding jobs, about a third of the men expressed substantial pessimism
about their career prospects. Most were reared in working-class and minority
neighborhoods, including many whose homes teetered on the edge of pov-
erty, but about two-ﬁ fths are white men who could look back on a ﬁ nancially
secure childhood. Yet economic uncertainties and the demoralizing effects of

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regimented jobs prompted all of these men to take a different approach to
work and family life. If equality proves impossible, they prefer autonomy to
the more rigid requirements of breadwinning.

Losing Faith in the American Dream

Although breadwinning continues to form the core of “hegemonic masculin-
ity,” the shrinking pool of traditional jobs undermines autonomous men’s
desire to seek and ability to ﬁ nd steady, secure work. While this view is
most prevalent among men with modest economic and educational resources,
people from all backgrounds concur.

At twenty-nine, Nick believed down-

sizing and “deskilling” would leave him unable to ﬁ nd the kind of economic
security his working-class father enjoyed:

I’m worried about the future because I am still unemployed. There are
a lot of people who are a lot less skilled than I am, [who have] a lot less
determination and a lot less communication skills, getting positions
because [employers] don’t feel like paying the top dollar.

Antonio reached a similar conclusion about his chances of reproducing

the middle-class standard he enjoyed as a child:

In the future, I see a lot of chaos. I wake up with nightmares about the
money being gone. We’re now middle-class, but that’s not gonna exist
years from now. You’re either gonna be at the top or at the bottom.

If breadwinning men respond to rising competition by vowing to work

longer hours, autonomous men are tempted to withdraw from the con-
test. Demoralized by his low-paying jobs, Jermaine, a high school dropout,
decided paid work hardly seemed worth the effort:

I’m tired of working. I’ve been working off and on since I was thirteen,
fourteen, and I don’t have money in the bank. Maybe there’s some-
thing out there I would like to see through to the end, but nothing
comes to mind. Who wants to work twenty-ﬁ ve, thirty years in the
same place, and then when it’s time to collect a pension, you’re too old
to enjoy it?

Also in his mid-twenties but with a college degree, Jeff reached a similar

conclusion about his more lucrative, but suffocating, career in ﬁ nance:

I had plans to be a ﬁ nancial analyst for six, seven years. Now I don’t
give a shit about any of that. I’d just like to cruise around and say,
“screw it all.” Most people, they’ll stay put somewhere, but I’d like to

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181

maybe go down to Australia [where] I think culturally they’re more
into anarchy.

Demoralized by poorly paid or overly demanding jobs, autonomous men

soured on the goal of building a traditional (male) career and chose riskier
paths. Antonio planned to seek his fortune outside the structure of a bureau-
cratic organization:

Jobs in corporations—I was getting paid, but so what? So I was going
late, wasn’t enthused to be at the job. I felt like I was selling my soul
to this company, like this is gonna be my life now.

Richard sought freedom from the relentless monotony of mainstream work:

I don’t want to be stuck here doing the same thing nine-to-ﬁ ve every
day for the rest of my life. I just don’t know if I want to work. I sound
like a dreamer, and I am, but I want lots of time. One summer, I went
to Mexico and just painted. I want to be able to do that. I need time
to explore and do what I need to do.

Putting Family on the Back Burner

Men’s doubts about ﬁ nding or wanting a steady job foster equally strong
doubts about marrying. Comparing his own uncertainty with the opportu-
nities enjoyed by his parents, Angel found family commitments taking a
mental backseat:

I really don’t know what’s gonna happen, if I’m gonna have kids.
Before I bring any life to this planet, I want to be well off, situated
where I don’t have to worry—like my parents.

And Antonio planned to put off becoming a husband or father indeﬁ nitely:

I’m not rushin’ into marriage. I’m very cynical. Things are gonna get
real hard. I wouldn’t bring kids into this. If I’m not stable, my kid
ain’t gonna be stable. I’m more focused on dealing with my own insta-
bility, the economic revolution that’s going on.

Men stressing autonomy do not view their reluctance to marry as a lack

of proper “family values,” but rather as a morally responsible response to
economic uncertainties. Michael argued it would be irresponsible to marry
before achieving ﬁ nancial stability:

I have the correct values—strong family, religious, moral values. I’m
gonna do the right thing. But you need [to] make a paycheck so you

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can afford to do the right thing. Work is not promised to you, and
that’s what you really have to focus on.

And like a growing number of women, Jermaine viewed independence as

a necessary step on the path to self-development:

I don’t want to live with anybody right now. I haven’t done anything
for me yet! If I’m gonna have a place, I want it to be my place. I really
don’t want to be in a relationship . . . until my feet are ﬁ rmly cemented
in the ground.

Poor work prospects, pessimism about the future, and a desire to avoid

stiﬂ ing jobs prompt men to fall back on autonomy. Some are reacting to
the growing time demands and false promises in white-collar careers, while
others focus on the dwindling rewards and shrinking opportunities in blue-
collar occupations. These different routes lead in a similar direction: men’s
version of “opting out.”

Although the overwhelming majority of Americans eventually marry,

marriage rates have declined among most income and ethnic groups.
The decline is steeper for the less educated and for members of racial
minorities, where men’s school and work opportunities are especially
squeezed.

Indeed, the largest gender disparities in educational achieve-

ment are among racial and ethnic minorities, where girls have graduated
from high school and college at higher rates than boys.

Since half as

many African-American men as women now graduate from college, and
African-American men have suffered a 12 percent decline in their median
income over the last three decades (while African-American women have
experienced a 75 percent increase), it is not surprising they have the low-
est marriage rate of any racial group.

Yet regardless of race or ethnicity,

as long as a breadwinning ethic pervades our notions of what makes a man
“marriageable,” low-earning men with dim job prospects face a declining
incentive to marry and better-educated women have similarly low motiva-
tion to choose them as a partner.

tying a loose knot

Autonomous men do not reject the possibility of ﬁ nding a lasting relation-
ship, but they see marriage as only one among a range of alternatives. For
David, marriage remained an option, but not a requirement:

I don’t see marriage as an absolute priority. I’m glad that I don’t think
of it that way. I don’t feel pressured.

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Jeff also planned to resist the pressure:

I couldn’t really set a goal saying I need to be married, because you do
that to yourself and all of a sudden you’re marrying somebody you’re
not gonna be happy with.

Accordingly, these men rejected the institution of marriage as the only

route to mature manhood.

Like self-reliant women, they view marriage an

option to be taken only under the most propitious circumstances.

Low on the List

Autonomous men place marriage low on their list of priorities, and, like self-
reliant women, set a very high standard for choosing it. Turning the tables on
those who argue that singlehood devalues marriage, autonomous men believe
they valued it more.

Watching his parents stay together throughout his

childhood only to divorce after he left home convinced Noah it would be bet-
ter to remain single than to seek marital ideals he could not achieve:

I would never jump into marriage. I would tell her everything about
what my parents were about so she knew what kind of baggage I was
carrying. It’s the most important decision I might make. We have to
spend enough time to see each other at our worst.

Although Joel’s parents stayed together, he agreed:

I’ll deﬁ nitely look at my situation and see if I’m in danger of making
the same mistakes. It’s such a huge commitment, it seems that people
don’t actually sit down and think of how it’s really going to be.

Taking pride in resisting the pressure to marry, these men distinguish

between marriage as a legal matter and commitment as a state of mind.
Married and divorced by twenty-nine, Nick had good reason to decide that
“a piece of paper does not mean you’re married.” Still in his early twenties
and never married, Richard also believed that only a very high standard for
marrying would help him avoid divorce:

I haven’t found anyone I’d like to marry, and I don’t know if she’s out
there. I’m going to make sure she is 100 percent what I want—because
I don’t want to go through any divorce. People nowadays take mar-
riage for granted—we’ll get married just because we’re supposed to.
It’s a very loose thing. You get married, divorced, no problem. There’s
no sacred bond anymore. So that’s the way it’s affected me. I wouldn’t
get married just for someone I think is really cool.

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To avoid making the “wrong” choice, autonomous men set conditions

for any relationship to meet. Noah insisted on a prearranged plan to resolve
conﬂ icts and “build” a worthy partnership:

I would make a prenuptial agreement to seek counseling if we ever felt
that we would fall apart, and that would be something we’d have to
promise to prepare for.

Michael believed any marriage would need a prior blueprint similar to

those he drew up as an engineer:

If you look at it statistically, it doesn’t make sense. Over ﬁ fty percent
of marriages end in divorce. So you have to nurture the kind of mar-
riage you want. You have to draw it out before you can go into it.
I want to blueprint how I want marriage to be.

Although most men, and women, do ultimately marry, autonomous men

plan to postpone as long as possible. Not concerned about a ticking biologi-
cal clock, they have the luxury of time. At twenty-ﬁ ve, Jeff vowed to post-
pone a decision for as long as possible and took no ﬁ rm position on what that
decision might ultimately be:

I may have thought I would be with somebody at this point,
but it’s been like, “Stay single as long as possible.” And it was
always everybody saying, “Don’t get married.” So I don’t feel the
pressure.

Blaming his parents’ troubles on their rush to marry, Gabriel concurred:

I’m now thinking it could easily be forty. I want to go into something
like that being sure it’s what I want to do. There’s no reason to rush.
[My parents] got married in their early twenties, and I don’t want to
make the mistake of marrying too young.

In setting a high standard and placing marriage low on their list of pri-

orities, autonomous men seek to avoid the neotraditional bargain outlined
by their breadwinning peers. Married or not, they favor relationships where
both partners retain a considerable measure of independence.

Seeking a Self-Sufﬁ cient Partner

Autonomous men use a metric of equal freedom, rather than equal shar-
ing, to deﬁ ne the ideal of equality. In return for preserving their indepen-
dence, they grant a large measure of it to others. Luis took pride in giving his
ex-girlfriend the same leeway that he reserved for himself:

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We were living together, but I always told her, I tell her still, “If it
wasn’t working out for you, you just had to say so.” If you get along
well, it works out. If it doesn’t, I always felt like I never owned her.
So if she wanted to move on, I enjoyed the good times. I’m not a
grudge-holding person.

Mark believed his long-term, live-apart relationship succeeded precisely

because each could retreat to their own separate space:

The space we have in the relationship—that’s a big factor in why we
stayed together all these years. I can have my own space, do my own
thing, but then I have her there. I’d feel alienated if I was to settle
down—the control factor.

Since independence requires a ﬁ nancial base, autonomous men also

reject the neotraditional view that employment should be optional or sec-
ondary for women. Only a work-committed person would make a suitable
mate. With no desire or intention to support a wife, Daniel appreciated
knowing the women he dated would never want to depend on him for their
livelihood:

If she doesn’t work, and she’s a deadbeat—I don’t think I’d date a girl
like that, not for more than two days. Cheryl won’t take money from
me. I don’t see her ever going, “I don’t want to work anymore.” She
hates her job, but she does it because she’s earning her own money.

And Mark concurred:

In terms of having a wife who doesn’t work, that’s a lot of pressure on
me to carry the whole weight of the family. I’d rather have a working
partner. My girlfriend could never not work. That’s the farthest thing
from her mind.

Work offers a crucial source of psychological as well as ﬁ nancial indepen-

dence for the women in their lives. These men found it difﬁ cult to fully respect
a partner who lacks an identity beyond hearth and home. Gabriel could not
imagine having a partner who did not have a base outside the home:

I just want, need someone who can stand on their own. I wouldn’t
mind having someone make more—not for the sake of leeching off
her, but so that she was independent. I have to respect her, so she has
to be a doer. I need someone to think for themselves.

Richard agreed:

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Life is too short, and it shouldn’t revolve around a household. There
are so many things I need see, do, experience, and I’d feel trapped
being in a house. I wouldn’t want it for me, so I wouldn’t want anyone
else to like it.

Men who fell back on autonomy do not reject partnerships, but they seek

ones that do not impinge too greatly on their own freedom. This means ﬁ nd-
ing someone with an independent income and identity, who can and will be
ﬁ nancially and emotionally self-sustaining.

Paternal Ambivalence

Since it is not possible for children to support or care for themselves, autono-
mous men are ambivalent about fatherhood. Most plan to postpone parent-
hood indeﬁ nitely, but some are fathers who do not live with their offspring.

All of these men reject the view that “being responsible” requires bearing
children or living with the children they had borne. At twenty-seven, Luis felt
resisting parenthood went hand in hand with resisting breadwinning, since
being “child-free” relieved him of having to bring home a big paycheck:

In ten, twenty years, maybe. ’Cause I like doing my own thing.
If something else came along that I wanted to do, all I have to do is
make sure someone takes care of the cat. If I had a family, I would
have to have a job that’s making nice money. If I had kids, I’d have to
provide for them.

Single fathers did not have the luxury of postponing parenthood, but

they did resist obligations to the mothers of their children. Michael distin-
guished the importance of having a tie with his daughter from his willing-
ness to support her mother. Though involved in his child’s life, he refused his
girlfriend’s requests to marry or even live together until—and unless—she
became secure in her own career:

I’m very close to Chandra, and I love her mother, but Kim has to get
her act together before I consider marrying. Commitment is ﬁ ne and
dandy, but you can’t fall into a trap. She’s got some bad habits, and one
of them is being lazy. Before we move in, I want her to be established
in her career, motivated in herself, and not live through me. When she
does that, I don’t have a problem.

Whether they postponed fatherhood, plan to remain childless, or live

apart from their children, these men do not view their choice as irresponsible.

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After watching his parents and siblings struggle in unhappy marriages, Nick
decided that no one—least of all his son—would beneﬁ t from his staying in
a forced and ﬂ awed union:

I wanted to stay together, because that’s the way my parents did it,
but then I realized that I don’t believe anybody should stay together
because of a child. I’ve seen that happen with my brother’s son. They
stayed together just because of him, and now he’s seven and in therapy.
A lot could have been avoided by not getting married.

Steve, at twenty-six and openly gay, viewed childlessness as the best

option as long as he felt unprepared to make the needed sacriﬁ ces:

I don’t rule anything out, but even thinking of the future, I’m not
planning it. The kid’s got to be the priority. When I get to that point,
maybe. For now, it’s me doing what I want to do for myself.

By remaining childless, becoming a father-at-a-distance, or rejecting a

necessary link between paternity and marriage, autonomous men seek to
redeﬁ ne the terms and conditions of fatherhood. This outlook upholds the
ideal of personal independence and provides an escape from the pressures of
primary breadwinning, but it allows little room for equal parenting.

gender and the meaning of autonomy

Autonomous men, like self-reliant women, view independence as a survival
strategy, not an ideal. Yet women view self-reliance as a way to avoid depen-
dence on a man while still being able to care for children and forge ties to
others. Autonomous men are more inclined to avoid such ties unless and
until they can achieve a level of ﬁ nancial stability that seems not only elusive
but hard to deﬁ ne.

Concerns that neither economic security nor a lasting

relationship will come their way make this starker version of singlehood and
independence more acceptable. It nevertheless reﬂ ects the continuing stric-
tures on visions of masculinity, which stress men’s breadwinning despite the
decline in their economic entitlement.

Such a strategy reduces an unbear-

able weight, but it also leaves autonomous men with tenuous social connec-
tions, a situation few greeted with enthusiasm.

Noah admitted:

I don’t see myself as having a family because I just don’t see that
progression. If I think about it, that’s going to be too much to han-
dle . . . because I’m commitmentless and alone.

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Dilemmas and Uncertainties in Men’s Lives

In a mirror image of women’s outlooks, most men fall back on modiﬁ ed tradi-
tionalism, while some favor personal autonomy over breadwinning obligations.
Because equal sharing threatens to exact a toll on men’s occupational and eco-
nomic achievement, most men prefer to reassert their place as a primary bread-
winner, while leaving room for their partner to make additional contributions.
By deﬁ ning equality as women’s “choice” to add work onto mothering, neotradi-
tionalism allows men to acknowledge women’s desire for a life beyond the home
and also to rely on the ﬁ nancial cushion of a second income. This strategy accepts
the end of an era of stay-at-home mothers, but not the disappearance of distinct
gender boundaries. Breadwinning men instead deﬁ ne separate spheres of respon-
sibility for fathers and mothers, even if two-earner families are here to stay.

A sizeable minority of men, however, prefer another alternative. Poor work

prospects and skepticism about marriage have left them wary of breadwin-
ning and searching for a relationship with a self-sustaining partner who does
not depend on their ﬁ nancial support. These men seek independence in lieu
of equal sharing, but they give autonomy a different twist than self-reliant
women by stressing “freedom from” breadwinning rather than “freedom to”
support themselves.

Despite the differences between neotraditional and autonomous men,

both outlooks are adaptive responses, not inherent attributes, and they can
shift as circumstances change. Autonomous men realize they might welcome
marriage and commitment in the long run, especially if their ﬁ nancial pros-
pects improve, while breadwinning men concede the future might not bring
the opportunities they anticipate. Brian planned to be a breadwinner, but
recognizing “anything could happen,” he admitted, “I could be making a lot
of money, or I could be out of a job and totally stuck.” In contrast, Gabriel
harbored strong doubts about marriage, but conceded his skepticism could
dissolve if circumstances changed his mind:

If you asked me ﬁ ve years ago, I’d say there was absolutely no way of
ever getting married. Because I didn’t know anybody who was happy
and married. But even in the last year—meeting and getting involved
with Val and just seeing that marriage doesn’t have to be like that—
came a level of maturity that I’ve never had.

Whether they fall back on breadwinning or autonomy, young men face an

uncertain future that may—and probably will—change at unexpected times
and in unexpected ways. Their life paths, like those of women, ultimately
depend on the opportunities and obstacles they encounter along the way.

c h a p t e r e i g h t

Reaching across the Gender Divide

he children of the gender revolution are preparing for an irreversibly
transformed world, in which unpredictable personal and social chal-

lenges make gender ﬂ exibility and work-family balance not just appealing
but essential. Yet the realities of resistant social and economic institutions
make these ideals seem distant and elusive. With no way back to a dimly per-
ceived past and no clear path toward their desired goals, young adults must
formulate “second best” strategies to cope with an uncertain future. These
fallback strategies take women and men in different and potentially clashing
directions in their quest for security and personal happiness.

Yet ideals do not perish simply because they are difﬁ cult to achieve. Few

of my interviewees wish to return to a time when work and family “roles”
were clear, distinct, and taken for granted. When asked to compare their
options with those of their parents and grandparents, women and men over-
whelmingly agree that, despite the obstacles, women are better off today.
In response to the question “On balance, do you think women have it bet-
ter today than they did in the past, worse today, or is there no difference,”
83 percent of women and 76 percent of men say today’s women have it bet-
ter.

When the same question is asked about men, most agree that men are

either better off today or no worse off, with 35 percent of men and 45 percent
of women responding that, all in all, men have it better today and another
39 percent of men and 48 percent of women saying there is little change and
men have not lost because women have gained.

The one exception to this trend is among African-American men, where

large and continuing disadvantages leave half of them saying men—or, more
speciﬁ cally, Black men—have it worse today. Yet they do not attribute Black

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men’s losses to women’s gains, but rather to seemingly unrelenting social
forces that limit their own opportunities. This agreement among women
and men offers a potential bridge across the divide that separates self-reliant
women and neotraditional men. Even if new gender ideals appear difﬁ cult to
attain, or even to imagine attaining, they reﬂ ect widespread and mounting
desires that create a powerful force for change. Even values that are hard to
realize matter, because they prompt efforts to overcome social obstacles.

Looking for a Middle Path

Most young women and men do not see the sexes as opposites who possess
different capacities and occupy different planets.

They reject a forced choice

between personal autonomy and lasting commitment, preferring a relation-
ship and a vision of the self that honors both. Though Michelle’s two-career
parents never resolved their conﬂ icts and ultimately broke up, she hoped to
chart a more ﬂ exible middle path:

My parents are sort of closed off, whereas I’m more open-minded about
my options. My mom has become very career-driven, and my dad’s
feeling sorry for himself. I don’t think that one side or the other is bad
or wrong. They’re just at two extremes, and I want to be in a balance.

Sandra’s parents remained unhappily wed to a traditional arrangement,

but she too hoped to avoid her parents’ battle lines:

Compared to my parents, I want us to have more autonomy and [not]
knit into each other. I want a job that satisﬁ es me, and I want someone
to get the satisfaction out of their job, but I don’t want someone who’s
a workaholic.

Young women and men know they must create new ways of working and

caring in order to ﬁ nd ﬂ exibility and balance, and ﬁ nding the middle path
between the “competing devotions” of family and work will not be easy.

Megan observed, the conﬂ icts between earning a living and rearing children
make the path ahead difﬁ cult to navigate:

Children are just an afterthought [in this] society. Do I spend more
time with my child, or do I work at a job where I can get health care?
People shouldn’t have to make choices like that.

Although these dilemmas stem from the social organization of earning

and caretaking, with undiluted commitment stressed at the workplace and

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privatized care at home, most of my interviewees are reluctant to rely on col-
lective solutions from either employers or government. While convinced of
the need for change, they lack trust in the good faith of large institutions,
which seem an integral a part of the problem, and have more conﬁ dence in
their own ability to control their fate.

The preference for private solutions

over political action may look like apathy, but it actually reﬂ ects a growing
need—and potential—for broader institutional change.

mixed emotions

Across the political spectrum, young women and men are torn between desir-
ing social change and fearing that collective solutions would prove useless
or backﬁ re in dangerous ways. Most believe communities and workplaces
should help parents succeed at work without sacriﬁ cing their children’s well-
being. Some say neighborhoods should provide more child care, while others
look to the workplace for more ﬂ exibility and parenting time.

Anita argued

that children gain social skills in public settings:

I’m a big believer in day care. It’s great for children to be around other
children and learn in a different environment. After having worked in
the day care center, I just think it’s important for kids to be around
other kids and socialize.

Joel contended that employers should place family needs above a narrow

focus on short-term proﬁ ts:

They should be more realistic and realize that sometimes work has to
come second and family needs arise. There’s an element of realism that
doesn’t seem to exist in the workplace. It’s like you can’t have anything
else but the work, but that really isn’t true.

Although women and men from a range of backgrounds concur that new

realities imply new ways of apportioning public and private responsibility,
most are skeptical about the prospects for political change. Those leaning
toward political conservatism stress the dangers of government intervention
in the private sphere of family life or the economic decisions of employers.
Brian worried that the government would tax his hard-earned income to
support other families, while legislative mandates would hamper economic
growth and impinge on employers’ rights:

I don’t want to support people that just wanna sit on their ass and col-
lect checks, not get a job or anything. So the government should just

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stay out of it. Just let the economy run itself. People should be left to
do what they’ve gotta do. They’ve got to run their own business to try
to make money and not to please the government.

More surprising, people with liberal views share these doubts. Across

the ideological spectrum, then, young women and men are skeptical, even
cynical, about whether institutions can change in needed ways, doubting
both the competence of governments and the intentions of employers.

Most have limited faith that government will act on their behalf or for the
common good. Antonio believed valuable resources would be misspent by
politicians:

If they wanted to, they could help. They’ve got something on Mars.
But how many homeless people do we have? Things like that get me
angry. So much money being wasted.

Employers seem as untrustworthy as politicians and policy makers. Most

worry that any support at the workplace will inevitably come with a price.
Indeed, a number of studies have shown that workers—whether women or
men—fear that family-support options, such as parental leave and ﬂ exible
scheduling, entail substantial career risks. Though all workers are aware of
these penalties, women are more likely to accept them for the sake of fam-
ily life.

Yet women and men alike use camouﬂ age strategies to hide their

caregiving activities; rather than acknowledging their involvement in care
work, they refrain from requesting ﬂ ex time and make excuses for absences
or missed meetings.

They fear, like Noah, that employers who offer support

with one hand will take it back with the other:

The problem is once you get something from [an employer], you owe
them, and that scares me. Something’s going to come up later, and I’m
going to be the one who pays. I don’t want to have to owe anybody.
I just want to work decent hours, for decent pay.

Whether government interference or corporate greed appears to be the

culprit, young women and men have mixed emotions about enacting social
policies to address the ensuing problems. Even those who acknowledge the
institutional sources of their dilemmas lack conﬁ dence that organizations
will—or can—provide the solutions. Antonio doubted institutions stuck in
the past could or would catch up:

I don’t look towards these things happening because it’s just too much
of a change. So it’s impossible. Not here, not now.

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on their own

Amid concerns that policies developed by employers or public ofﬁ cials will
backﬁ re and intensify already serious double binds, the kind of change that
looks most possible is change from below. William believed bottom-up
approaches would work better than top-down ones:

It doesn’t seem like social engineering works well. The fact that com-
panies are starting to do day care—that’s not a company’s doing it, it’s
people saying we want this.

Sarah agreed:

Can we change it? No, because there’s too much keeping it going. It
has to be at a whole other level of people changing.

Dubious about collective solutions, young women and men are inclined

to turn to private ones. This outlook reveals an especially American approach
to social policy, which afﬁ rms the ethos of personal responsibility and stresses
“equal opportunities” rather than “equitable outcomes.”

In this context,

my interviewees hope sheer determination will help them join the ranks of
the “lucky” few. Rather than trying to change the odds, they plan to tailor
personal strategies to overcome them. Noah lived in a two-parent, middle-
class suburban home and watched his father move up the ladder at a large law
ﬁ rm, but he vowed to reject such a rigid, lockstep path:

I see the world totally going against me. You work until you drop.
Pregnant women working until the last minute and back again before
I even knew they were gone. But if that’s the way the world is work-
ing, I will keep rebelling against it.

Antonio, raised by his mother and grandparents in a Latino enclave, agreed:

Me and my generation, we’re breaking the cycle of their family life-
style, like work all day, but not going anywhere. The parents want to
push you: go get this job, you gotta ﬁ t into the world. But I know
myself. If I go that route, I’m gonna end up being miserable.

Armed with faith in themselves, women and men alike stress personal

control rather than social supports. They hope to ﬁ ght back against the insti-
tutional pressures that put parenting and work on a collision course. These
resistance strategies may be uncoordinated, but they reveal a growing need
and desire for new ways of working and family building.

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Fighting for Control at Work

The mid-twentieth-century model of work deﬁ ned success as a steady pro-
gression up an organizational chart or job security on the shop ﬂ oor. It pre-
sumed the worker (read: male) could count on a partner (read: female) at
home and the employer would reward loyalty with loyalty. This model grad-
ually faded as stagnating pay scales undermined men’s capacity to subsidize
an unpaid domestic spouse, and global competition and market uncertainty
undermined the once implicit bargain between employer and employee.

Such changes prompt young men—and women—to see this “career mys-
tique” as more myth than reality.

Joel valued hard work, but did not wish

to work in a large, hierarchical setting:

When I was with big corporations, I felt taken advantage of. It hasn’t
soured me on working, but on those situations. They really don’t treat
you as a person.

Reared by his mother in an African-American working-class neighbor-

hood, Isaiah reached a similar conclusion:

Everybody works so hard to get so little accomplished. It feels like,
“Are you busy being productive, or are you just busy being busy?” It’s
affected me in that I don’t want to have a traditional job. If you don’t
have a traditional job, you have the time, freedom to do what you
think is important.

Amid the fading of bureaucratically organized careers, young workers see

danger in putting all their ﬁ nancial eggs in one employer’s basket. They hope
instead to shape a career trajectory of their own.

in search of work autonomy

Young women and men from all backgrounds hope to build careers minimiz-
ing dominance from above. Kayla, a college graduate with plans to become a
ﬁ nancial analyst, sought some control over the conditions of her labor:

I want a job where I have autonomy. I want to call the shots at the end
of the day, and I want to be able to control what I do. I want to make
a contribution to society and to my bottom line.

Carlos returned to community college after barely completing high

school, but he also wanted to ﬁ nd a work life with considerable autonomy:

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I don’t like the idea of having to work for other people. They think
’cause they’re your boss, they’re over you. If you’re the same person as
me, who gives you the right? That’s why I’d rather be the person run-
ning my own business.

These shared goals entail different strategies. Those with middle-class

resources and educational credentials focus on professional work and the pos-
sibility of upward career mobility, while those with more modest ﬁ nancial
and school resources seek ways to avoid hierarchies altogether. Professional
work appears to offer the best chance of achieving job autonomy. Megan
expected to control her time and work conditions by setting up a private
practice as a speech therapist:

That’s the big thing for me—something that gives me plenty of ﬂ ex-
ibility and autonomy as far as when I work and how much I work.
With speech pathology, I can take in private clients, have some control
over my working environment.

Amanda, perhaps naively, viewed the upper echelons of the corporate

world as bestowing similar beneﬁ ts:

In ten years, [I hope to be] married, probably thinking about chil-
dren, working hard, but in a position—like vice president—where
you don’t have to work as hard.

Those with fewer credentials and less interest in professional training look

to less hierarchically organized job settings, especially self-employment.

After a succession of uninspiring jobs, including an especially demoralizing
stint in the mail room of a large newspaper, Antonio left to join a group of
friends who were launching their own music engineering ﬁ rm. He vowed to
leave the world of “nine to ﬁ ve” behind:

I need money, but I don’t need all the bullshit that comes along with
just having the job. I’m not a nine-to-ﬁ ver. But I learned you can have
your own successful business! We want to have a company, a place we
can call our own. We can say we made this work, [rather than] bring-
ing in a little bullshit check every week.

In addition to setting up their own businesses, young people from all class

backgrounds hope to ﬁ nd innovative work settings offering more ﬂ exibility
and personal control than traditional ones. As a computer technician, Luis
relished the chance to work at night, when supervisors would not be moni-
toring his every move:

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If they left me alone, that’s my ideal job. [That’s why] I like to do
something with computers. As long as I can make a living and not be
too stressed out. My dad’s a workaholic, but I’m not.

Even though Miranda worked a long week, she treasured the ﬂ exibility to

decide when and how to do her job:

I work closer to sixty-hour weeks, but they’re focused on what you
produce and not on punching a time clock. It takes an open mind and
trusting people. I’ve fallen into a really nice organization. It’ll take a
while to ﬁ nd something that will beat this.

By relying on some combination of skill and sheer determination, men and

women both seek control over the terms of their daily lives. Whether putting
in many hours or few, working on one’s own or with others, they want to work
on their own terms. This opens the possibility for more options at home as
well. Mark saw self-employment as a route to greater parental involvement:

If I own my own gym or a business like that, I would have the type of
hours where I’d be in and out, and I’d be available. I want to be the
type of father to be more emotionally involved, deﬁ nitely. You control
your own destiny in a lot of ways like that.

Carlos hoped building his own business would do more than give him

more time with his children; it would also create something he could pass
on to them:

I’m gonna open up my own business—audio recording, engineering,
stuff like that—so that if I ever do have kids, my kids can take on the
family business. I don’t want them being nobody else’s slave.

Whether these strategies involve rising to the top of a hierarchy, gaining

professional skills, or creating a small-scale enterprise, they aim for a level of
work autonomy that may prove just as hard to enact as the ideals of family
security and work-family balance.

Yet because these desires are wide and

deep, they are an emerging force for change.

Young workers may worry

about eroding job security, but they also value the opportunities for self-
invention offered in a postindustrial economy.

it’s

my career

Young workers, searching for an alternative to the mid-twentieth-century
concept of “career” deﬁ ned as a series of steps on a ﬁ xed organizational chart,
continue to value the idea of a career, but they deﬁ ne it in a different way.

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After watching his father suffer a career-ending layoff after years of service,
Joel rejected the notion that remaining a loyal employee would ensure job
security or a rising income:

Twenty-ﬁ ve years in one job and then suddenly losing it! He was ﬁ gur-
ing to retire with that place. It came as a shock. I used it as a learning
experience—that things aren’t as stable as you might think, and not to
make a choice just because of security. Consciously or subconsciously,
I don’t want to fall in that situation.

Ashley reached the same conclusion after her mother lost her job:

I don’t want to see myself being downsized, like my mother. So I’m
planning postgraduate work in the medical ﬁ eld. If I can’t, I’ll be on
my way to owning something of my own, a business of some kind.

Others did not need their parents’ experiences to conclude that stepping

off a narrow career track holds intrinsic appeal. Miranda hoped to pursue a
variety of jobs, rather than specializing in one:

The ladder seems kind of old-fashioned. I see myself moving around.
And as much as I’ve changed jobs and done different things, I don’t
know that I would go back to doing the same thing. I like learning.
And just about every job that I’ve gotten into, I’ve been over my head,
‘cause I’ve always said “Yeah, I can do it,” and then I get in there and
learn it and I’m ready to move on. I like the challenge of new stuff.

Richard had a similar plan:

I want to do more than one thing, and I can see myself doing multiple
different things throughout my life—maybe some kind of entrepre-
neurial stuff, working with different investments, and as a psycholo-
gist from time to time.

Among those who set out in traditional jobs, many plan to veer off this

course sooner or later by achieving enough early success to launch a more
independent work path later on. For Michael, a job as an engineer for a local
transit authority marked a beginning in a much longer plan:

I’m working there to gain experience and knowledge, but my ultimate
goal is to start my own business—eventually consulting, making my
own hours. Even if I don’t make a lot of money, I’ll be well off. I want
to be happy, take care of my family, be my own boss so I can have
control.

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Maria, a ﬁ nancial trader, hoped long hours early in her career would pro-

vide her with the resources to choose less time-consuming work later on:

I just want to make enough, and this would avail me the opportunity
to have more free time, so then I could stop and do something else.

No longer do young workers assume that a “real” career must follow a

predictable series of steps. In place of what Arlie Hochschild once called “the
clockwork of male careers,” men and women both want to shape their career
path by putting a sequence of jobs together in creative and unforeseeable
ways.

money isn’t everything

Young workers seek job autonomy, and most are willing to make some sac-
riﬁ ces to achieve it. Thoroughly committed to her promising work as an
analyst for a computer products company, Miranda refused to measure her
worth by her pay:

I’ve worked at jobs I hated and jobs I’ve loved, and I’ve actually left
better-paying jobs to go to lesser-paying jobs. It’s harder ﬁ nancially,
but it’s better mentally, emotionally. I think it’s peace of mind. To
work every day at a job that you don’t like is just miserable.

It may be less surprising to hear a woman say she is willing to give up some

earnings in exchange for more satisfying work, but young men agree. Most
hold a more ambivalent view than “human capital” economists who argue
that men stress maximizing earnings more than other factors.

Although men

want to make enough to keep their families secure, few place earnings above
all else.

Nick held a series of construction and restaurant jobs, but resented

the pressure to sacriﬁ ce meaningful work on the altar of a high income:

I am looking society in the face and saying, “You’re wrong. Money
isn’t that important. Self-contentment, happiness is more important.
Make sure my family’s happy.” And that would have to include being
able to support them. I’m a very good worker, [but] what appeals to
me is being able to do what I want, not looking for the big paycheck.

Justin worked in a high-powered ﬁ nancial service ﬁ rm, but he felt the

same way:

I’m discovering what my values are, and I question—does money bring
happiness? Right now I need it, but I would like to achieve some sort

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of success. I would then be very willing to quit and be a teacher and
play with [my] kids every day. It won’t be the most successful life in
terms of money, but it will be a very satisfying life to me.

These aspirations could contravene parental pressures, but even the chil-

dren of afﬂ uence did not assume they would be able or willing to re-create
their parents’ lifestyles. Mark was reared by professional parents, but pre-
ferred to pursue more personally appealing if less ﬁ nancially promising work
as a physical trainer who might one day open his own gym:

My mom thinks I have to make a certain amount of money to be suc-
cessful, but I’m like, “If I’m doing something I hate, how am I gonna
be doing that?” It’s all right for her; it’s just not what I want. I want
to have it more balanced. They taught me a lot, but I have my own
thing.

Noah’s father was a “company man,” but Noah was prepared to trade a

well-paid but dispiriting public relations job in a corporate conglomerate for
the life of a freelance writer:

I’ll be happy if I just go from one assignment to another and get paid
for it. Could I do with less? The afﬂ uence I grew up in—I can honestly
say that I don’t crave those things.

Just as some middle-class men considered shifting down, hourly wage

workers resisted the economic incentives of overtime. Ray deemed time with
his two daughters more valuable than the extra income he earned putting in
overtime as a prison guard:

You can make ﬁ fty thousand easy, that’s base, and then you can make
sixty, seventy more. This is my sixth year, and I haven’t broke ﬁ fty yet.
I don’t do overtime. I tell people, I’m not staying. I like spending time
with my kids.

Daniel expected his job as a ﬁ reﬁ ghter to provide both time with his fam-

ily and enough money to avoid taking a second job:

Maybe I’ll do overtime or a second job once in a while—construction
or whatever. But if that will interfere with my children, I would never
get a second job, unless of course the kids needed the money.

The willingness to trade some money for more time and more satisfying

work may not cancel the cultural and familial pressures to emphasize earn-
ings, but it points to cracks in this ethos.

It also belies gender stereotypes

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depicting men, but not women, as earnings specialists. Young workers of all
stripes seek economic rewards, but not necessarily income maximization. They
are searching for work that balances “good enough” earnings with ﬂ exibility,
autonomy, and time for the rest of life.

If social arrangements allowed men

and women to enact their values, most would prefer to balance market and
nonmarket work rather than specializing in one at the expense of the other.

a new ideal worker?

The occupational shifts of an increasingly ﬂ uid and globalized postindustrial
economy create opposing forces for young workers. Competition for the best
jobs intensiﬁ es time demands and psychological pressures, but the decline of
an enduring contract between employers and employees leaves workers feel-
ing insecure. This clash prompts young workers to seek more control over
the conditions of their daily work and the longer-term course of their careers.
They have little choice but to rely on their skills and savvy to guide them
through a world that seems both treacherous and rich with opportunity.

Underneath this generational shift in work experiences lies a gender con-

vergence. By claiming the right to build unconventional work trajectories,
young people are closing the gap between male “careers” and female “jobs.”
Women now declare a commitment to lifelong work that embodies ambi-
tion but rejects a single-minded devotion to work. If women were the only
group seeking this path, it would signal little more than a reframing of their
historic place as the primary family caregivers. So the crux of this shift rests
with men’s fate. By resisting rigid deﬁ nitions of work and career, young men
also pose a challenge to the classic construction of an ideal worker as someone
who follows an uninterrupted series of full-time (and overtime) jobs while
displaying an unﬂ inching commitment to a “work ﬁ rst” ethos.

After watching their parents struggle to blend work and family, a new

generation recognizes the need to restructure the conditions of work if they
are to reshape the balance between earning and caring. Many men as well as
women prefer to fashion their own career paths, even if this means forgoing
some income to gain more control.

Will the effort to build more ﬂ exible careers succeed? While there is no

going back to the structured work trajectories that offered long-term secu-
rity to middle- and working-class (white) men, the prospects for the future
are uncertain. The converging hopes of young women and men nevertheless
signal a new stage in the gender revolution—one where workers of all stripes
question the viability of traditional jobs and seek instead to actively shape a
more ﬂ uid occupational pathway.

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Fighting for a Shared Work-Family Career

Flexibility and autonomy at work offer individuals a way to avoid workahol-
ism at one end of the spectrum and full-time domesticity at the other. But
two work lives must be coordinated in order to achieve equal sharing. As
Rosanna Hertz pointed out several decades ago, egalitarian couples must jug-
gle three careers—his, hers, and theirs.

Though few receive institutionalized

support for this “third career,” more young couples are trying—against the
odds and without a blueprint—to coordinate a shared “work-family career.”

As young women redeﬁ ne an ideal partner to include caretaking men, and
young men make a similar shift to include achieving women, together they
seek new ways to build a relationship.

And by bringing work home and

care to work, they also seek ways to break through the spatial and temporal
boundaries separating families from workplaces and communities.

redeﬁ ning the ideal partner

Just as the traditional workplace presumes that caretaking needs do not
encumber the ideal worker, the gender-divided family presumes that an ideal
partner is someone who specializes in either market or family work. New
economic and social realities, however, make these assumptions increasingly
untenable, transforming the ideal partner into someone who can and will
cross gender boundaries. Women now hold close to half of all jobs, and they
are more likely to work in service and white-collar occupations, where the
economy is most likely to grow.

Most couples now count on two earners, and

among two-paycheck families as a whole, women now contribute 44 percent
of the income.

Many men thus welcomed the chance to ﬁ nd an economically

successful partner, even if this tempered their claim as the prime provider.
Todd had little problem sharing his life with someone who made more:

I’d love it if she made money, and it wouldn’t bother me if she made
more. It wouldn’t bother me if she made less. It’s a bonus one way and
not a problem, hopefully, the other way.

These men also realized that ﬁ nding a work-committed partner means tak-

ing on more at home. And even though the gender gap in housework persists,
many men—and especially younger men—are more involved in domestic
work than their fathers. While women continue to do more, men’s contribu-
tion to housework has doubled since the 1960s, increasing from about 15
percent to more than 30 percent of the total, while the time they spend caring
for children has increased even more, especially because men are now more

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likely to multitask by combining leisure and child care.

Although Ken was

reared in a traditional middle-class family, he knew that searching for a work-
committed partner implied providing not just moral but practical support
at home:

[I’m looking for] the opposite of what my parents have—someone
who’s professional, with mutual admiration and support. Showing
respect for what the other person does. Not just saying that you love
somebody, but showing it through actions. So I hope we split things
right down the middle.

Reared in a two-earner, working-class home where no chores were off-

limits to his dad, Daniel expected to be a fully involved caretaker:

My wife can work as much as my mother worked. The caretaking, I’m
willing to take a little more of that. My father raised me to do things
for myself. I can cook, do the laundry, change diapers. I got a lot from
my father, and I plan to give a lot to my kids.

Some, like Noah, even dreamed of trading places. He was willing to

endure the discomfort of depending on a wife’s earnings and becoming a
contemporary “Mr. Mom” in exchange for the chance to pursue his love of
writing:

To ﬁ nd a nice woman with a good job, I hope that happens, because then
all this pressure will ﬂ y away and I’ll be able to be a person who writes.
I might feel guilt that my wife is working all the time—but I don’t
think we’d be living in this big mansion, so we’d be able to do it. I’ll be
home with the kids, and she will be out doing whatever she does.

With a growing pool of such men to draw from, young women are better

positioned to ﬁ nd a partner who supports—and expects—their achievement
outside the home. Catherine’s live-in partner refused to let her fall into self-
defeating patterns:

If he sees me feeling sorry for myself, he’s like, “I know exactly what
you’re doing, you’re ﬁ ghting success.” He won’t let me get away with
it. He’ll say, “Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re not gonna get it
unless you work hard for it.”

Some women also found partners who, like Noah, were willing to be the

primary caretaker. Though Theresa did not expect it, her husband became
their daughters’ designated babysitter when he could not work and she
became the main earner:

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He’s got this disability that prevents him from working. So he takes
care of the girls while I’m working. My daughters said, “Let’s get
something for daddy for Mother’s Day.” And I said, “You’re right;
daddy’s mommy too.”

Nina and her ﬁ ancé both worked full-time, but he still took on the nur-

turing labor in their household:

I feel a need to ﬁ nancially take care of things, and Tim’s more, if I had
an illness, he’d be there by my bedside taking care. He tells me that as
long as he can cook or clean or help out in that way, if that can make
me happy, then that makes him happy. Did I expect it? Not to the
extent of what he does. I deﬁ nitely do feel lucky.

Emerging partner ideals prompt more men and women to reject ﬁ xed gen-

der divisions and separate spheres. Young men increasingly need work-com-
mitted partners who share the ﬁ nancial load, and more young women can ﬁ nd
partners who expect them to do so. Indeed, basic economic shifts, such as the
contraction of manufacturing and blue-collar jobs, leave men with shrinking
opportunities for secure, well-paid, and unionized work.

At the same time,

women are more likely than men to attend college and earn college degrees, and
they are also concentrated in service and white-collar jobs.

These occupational

and educational shifts make changes in the deﬁ nition of an ideal—or marriage-
able—partner even more important. The future of marriage depends in part on
women’s and men’s willingness to seek partners who do not conform to tradi-
tional beliefs that husbands should have a higher level of education and earn
more than wives.

The option to enact new partner ideals depends, however, on

redrawing the boundaries between homes, communities, and workplaces.

crossing spatial and temporal boundaries

Young women and men also seek new ways to cross the spatial and temporal
boundaries separating paid and family work. They hope to ﬁ nd ﬂ exible jobs
that allow them to bring work home and bring home to work, to pursue
unconventional work schedules, and to take turns with partners and other
caregivers. Personally tailored careers and less structured work settings offer
a chance to blur the divide between home and work. Angela hoped she could
conduct her practice as a therapist at home:

I would like a job that [is] ﬂ exible or where you can work out of your
house. As a psychotherapist, I [can have] an ofﬁ ce in my house or
something where you don’t spend all your time commuting.

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Luis, the computer specialist, came to a similar conclusion:

I would really like to work from my house ’cause it’s important to
be a good father. With computers, you can. I’m trying to build up
to it.

Others considered taking their children to work, and not just for one day.

In contrast to the employees Arlie Hochschild describes in The Time Bind,
these young workers view the workplace not as a refuge from family life but
as a space where both might coexist.

Noah hoped to bring a child along on

his assignments as a journalist:

Whatever I do, I want to take a child with me. If I’m on assignment,
I’m going to take my kid. And I think if I can do that, I’ll have it all.

Once William ﬁ nished his chemistry degree, he looked forward to joining

a small biotechnology ﬁ rm with a relaxed, child-friendly environment:

I’m hoping to work in a small company which is really informal, so
I can bring the kids in the ofﬁ ce and play around, work odd hours that
make me able to do it all.

When neither bringing work home nor bringing a child to work seem

reasonable options, nontraditional work schedules offer a way to reshape the
temporal boundaries between working and caretaking. Daniel planned to use
the long breaks in his schedule to be an involved parent:

Working as a ﬁ reﬁ ghter, I’m around [home] a lot more than people
who have a regular job. As far as daytime, I can be with the kids. So
I’m hoping I’ll get married and be very happy raising my kids.

Some also considered creating their own caretaking communities, where

ﬂ exible work schedules for a group of parents would make collective child
rearing possible. William hoped to ﬁ nd a community of friends and neigh-
bors who took turns at caretaking:

In the best of all worlds, Lindsey and I would like a time-sharing day
care, where it’s a community of people who share their kids. And Tues-
day, all the kids stay with them; Wednesday, they’re yours. I would
really like to live in a place where you share with your neighbors, or
we’ll try to build it.

Finally, many took a longer view. Faced with unpredictable and changing

contingencies, Chris focused less on a ﬂ exible daily schedule and more on

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taking turns at paid and family work as circumstances permitted or required
over the long run:

With kids, it would be a function of who has more ﬂ exibility with
regard to their career, and if neither does, then one of us will have to
sacriﬁ ce one period and the other for another. It would really be ﬁ fty-
ﬁ fty down the line.

Louise also took this longer view:

Once I get into nursing, he can take time off to ﬁ nd himself. If he feels
he needs to go back to school, I can support everybody. I’ve always told
him, “If I had a very good job, and you wanted to take off time to ﬁ nd
something, I have no problem with it.”

Men are joining women in efforts to blur the boundaries of space and

time. The prospect of ﬂ exible jobs and autonomous careers provides hope for
a more balanced life. The prospect of ﬁ nding a partner with similar resources
also provides couples with hope for a coordinated effort. Planning to become
a freelance travel writer and start her own company, Elizabeth counted on
building a partnership where the lines between home and work meshed for
everyone:

Both of us, hopefully, would be working out of the home. Or we’d
have our place where, if we have to bring our kids or whatever, we’d
be the boss.

Brandon had a similar vision about becoming a physical therapist and

running a bed and breakfast with his ﬁ ancée:

I could do work four days a week, and with her, something like that
also. And if we’re running a hotel, it’s almost like you can be working
and be at home at the same time.

New ways of working—from e-mail to telecommuting to more casual

work settings in and close to home—provide options for young workers
to pursue these strategies. Like many social shifts, however, blurring the
distinction between public and private offers a double-edged promise. Eco-
nomic and technological changes may make it easier for young workers to
coordinate their work and caretaking efforts, but they also make it easier
for work to invade the time and space once set aside for private life. As Luis
put it, “to be on call twenty-four hours a day—I don’t know how to deal
with that.”

If workers have their way, however, women and men will use

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these changes to overcome the separation of work and family in time and
space.

building a work-family partnership

By redeﬁ ning the ideal partner and crossing the spatial and temporal bound-
aries separating public from private life, it is possible to strive for a shared
“work-family career.” This strategy offers a way to reach across the gender
divide, just as crafting a “personal career” offers a route to individual work
autonomy. Though these efforts undermine traditional forms of masculin-
ity and femininity, many young people see substantial offsetting advantages.
Women increasingly seek men who do housework and whom they consider
physically attractive, while men now rank intelligence and education higher
than cooking and housekeeping “as a desirable trait in a partner.”

Egalitarian marriages also appear to have some distinct advantages for

today’s couples. Wives are more satisﬁ ed and less likely to divorce when they
share domestic and paid work with their husbands, and husbands and wives
with egalitarian views have higher marital quality and fewer marital prob-
lems, even though (or perhaps because) they spend less time together.

Yet

the ultimate fate of egalitarian strategies depends on whether workplaces
and communities provide the necessary support. As Justin put it, “There’s
no model for this . . . but if something happened to make it possible, it would
change the way I do everything.”

Remaking Family Values

Enacting ﬂ exible work and family strategies also requires remaking family
values. The vast majority of my interviewees reject narrow visions of family
life that seem out of touch with their own circumstances and intolerant of the
lives of others. Even though Joel grew up in a traditional home, he saw new
family forms as a necessary and even natural response to twenty-ﬁ rst-century
realities:

If you’re from a different generation, it could be really hard to accept
the changes, but if you’re growing up now, it seems natural, really. If
there’s any hope for my generation, we need to be more open.

Shared experiences of gender and family upheavals bind young women

and men together in ways that transcend their diverse backgrounds and raise
suspicions about narrow, exclusionary views of what makes a good family.

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Yet they are also skeptical of a moral framework where anything goes and
everything is acceptable. Wary of moral certitude on one side and moral
relativism on the other, young adults resist stigmatizing others, but they
nevertheless seek a core set of standards for all. This effort points to a soften-
ing of the battle lines in the culture and gender wars.

resisting judgment

Whether they experienced shifts in their own families or observed them in
the lives of friends, neighbors, schoolmates, and coworkers, young people
have witnessed pervasive family changes that leave them reluctant to cast
judgment on others’ personal circumstances.

Those whose own families

joined the ranks of dual-earning or single-parent families sympathize with
the difﬁ culties facing everyone. Living in a two-income family left Angela
determined not to make invidious distinctions between family forms:

These days, when both parents work, I’m surrounded by situations
that reﬂ ect more of my situation when I was a child. I’m sure there’s
families that don’t, but now I just say “Hey, that’s what it is.” I don’t
judge it at all.

Children raised in stable homemaker-breadwinner homes are equally disin-

clined to distinguish between “better” and “worse” family types. Though not
experienced ﬁ rsthand, family changes have taken place around them. When
Megan ﬁ lled in as a substitute teacher, she realized her young students lived in
a wide range of household arrangements just as “normal” as her own:

The teacher left a family tree for the kids to ﬁ ll out, but their families
were nothing like this little ﬁ ll-in-the-blanks thing. If everybody had
a traditional family, it might have been something else, but everyone
had these crazy branches on their tree. It was amazingly complicated,
but it didn’t bother them any. It seemed natural and normal.

Simple dichotomies between “good” and “bad” family forms do not appear

to do justice to the subtle dynamics of family life nor do they provide a
realistic framework for coping with uncertain future contingencies. Though
Kevin’s parents stayed together, he thought it unfair to oppose divorce in all
circumstances, especially since such a policy would leave him ill equipped for
an unpredictable turn in his own life:

I’ve seen both, and I don’t know what I’d do if I was in that situation.
I do have an opinion, and it’s that I’m unsure. I don’t know.

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A reluctance to moralize does not, however, preclude making a judgment

about the merits of social change. To the contrary, few wish to surrender
the wider range of options they now take for granted. Whatever her con-
cern about the future, Patricia held little nostalgia for earlier eras with more
restricted choices:

I don’t want to be judgmental, but I really can’t conceive of living in
the ﬁ fties when you didn’t have the freedom you have now. It’s some-
thing I relish.

Reﬂ ecting on her own experiences in a home where “the bad stuff” went

unacknowledged, Donna did not wish to return to a period when idealized
views of family life masked secrets, lies, and unpleasant truths:

I don’t think there’s an ideal family. I don’t even think it existed.
There’s no such thing as the Brady Bunch. Everything was secrets
years ago. There were all these things going on; it just didn’t come
out. Then you give kids a complex. They grow up [thinking] “why
aren’t we like this?” Secrets will kill you.

stressing process, not form

Rejecting strict deﬁ nitions of a “good” family, women and men from all
types of homes agree that family functioning trumps family form. Kevin
lived in a stable, two-parent home, but he did not see it as inherently
superior:

I don’t think there’s one formula that makes for a successful family.
There are lots of families with both parents that are pretty crappy. And
there are single-parent families that are wonderful places to grow up. I
think it’s just all about understanding and being there and caring for
each other.

Reared by her mother and grandmother, Keisha took a similar view:

Everyone has their problems; nothing is ever perfect. I don’t feel like
I missed out on anything. I had the love and the support. All my sis-
ters and me, that’s the end product, and we’re real happy.

Instead of judging families according to their composition, women and

men reared in all types of homes view families, like individuals, as unique
entities facing speciﬁ c challenges. As Mitch declared:

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Those are just big generalizations, and I think it’s a function of what
one makes of it. A single-parent home has different challenges than
a two-parent home, but it can and does work. So I think how well it
works is pretty much a function of a case-by-case thing.

This stance does not mean it is inappropriate to judge families, but rather

that judgment should depend on different criteria. Drawing on their own
experiences, most prefer to stress the quality of a family’s bonds and the ﬂ ex-
ibility of its members. Joel’s parents divided their tasks in stereotypical ways,
but he believed an ideal family consists of a web of supportive relationships,
not a set of roles or legal ties:

An ideal father is someone who can do the juggling act. Same way
for the mother. I really don’t want to make any distinctions, like this
speciﬁ ed role is for either one. I really don’t believe that.

Chrystal, now a single mother, expressed a similar view:

“Family” to me is when you have more than one person who [are]
really there for each other, really able to give as well as take, comple-
menting the other people or other person. There are different types of
families out there, and it doesn’t really matter as long as there’s a lov-
ing support system in place.

This perspective extends to children’s well-being. While everyone agreed

an adult’s ﬁ rst responsibility, regardless of circumstance, is to provide a sup-
portive, caring context for dependents, they do not believe a child’s welfare
conﬂ icts with a parent’s—and especially a mother’s—needs. Looking back on
her own parents’ shifting ties to each other and to the workplace, Michelle
concluded:

As long as the child feels supported and loved, that’s the most impor-
tant thing—whether it’s the two-parent home, the single-parent
home, the mother is working, or anything.

For this generation, relationships, not roles, make families, and ties of

ongoing support, not formal legal obligations, bind them. Redeﬁ ning fam-
ilies in this way better ﬁ ts the new options and new uncertainties young
adults now face. They hope to ﬁ nd a “haven in a heartless world,” but this
haven does not take the same form for everyone at all times.

Indeed, no

one type can possibly meet individuals’ varied, developing needs or families’
changing contingencies.

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In a new twist on the classic argument that homemaker-breadwinner

households provide the best “ﬁ t” for modern societies, postindustrial condi-
tions actually make it more “functional” for people to have a variety of family
options as their lives unfold.

While a concern for the quality of relation-

ships rather than the composition of a household may seem to some to be a
sign of family decline, it actually reﬂ ects a more optimistic view. Even those
with difﬁ cult family experiences prefer to see families as ties that support and
uplift as well as bind.

beyond the culture wars

The search for a more inclusive, less judgmental vision of family life might
seem to portend a shift to moral relativism, but those who support new fam-
ily options do not reject universal principles. The challenge facing new gen-
erations is not whether to abandon universal values, but how to balance such
contradictory ones as family cohesion and personal freedom within a single
moral frame. Brianna was raised by a single mother, but she envisioned a
family life blending tolerance and autonomy with duty and commitment:

I wish we could have the family values that we had in the ﬁ fties, but
with the open-mindedness we have now. You can not care whether
your kid’s gay or understand when they have their ﬁ rst sexual experi-
ence but still sit down and have dinner together.

Sarah grew up in a traditional home, but hoped to ﬁ nd more balance

between individualism and commitment than her parents had achieved:

To me, an ideal family functions well as a unit but functions well sepa-
rately, too. I think of it as being very close and nurturing and warm
and all those things that we were taught, but also individuated, where
my family didn’t do so well.

Even those with more traditional outlooks see how new realities require

more ﬂ exibility. The Pew Research Center reports that the majority of young
adults between eighteen and twenty-nine believe divorce is “preferable to
maintaining an unhappy marriage,” and those reared by two married par-
ents are just as likely as those with divorced parents to agree.

With a strict

Catholic upbringing, Sam is one of these traditionally reared children, but he
recognized the injustice and danger in too rigid a moral frame:

I don’t believe in divorce. But if it’s really bad, ﬁ ghting constantly,
then [people] should be separated because that’s even a worse

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environment—that’s more trauma for the kid to grow up in than hav-
ing a single parent. It depends. There’s always exceptions.

In an age of family uncertainty, the challenge is to balance bedrock values

with an appreciation of the varied exigencies people face. Single at twenty-
seven, Alex felt that “good” families are those prepared to cope with whatever
comes:

If you’re realistic, recognizing that the world can be a hard place, a
family should be able to respond to that. So it may not be ideal, but
that’s what the family is there for.

So did Ray, who was thirty and shared the care, feeding, and ﬁ nancial sup-

port of his three young children with his wife:

There is no ideal family. All you can do is handle whatever’s given to
you.

And Brianna, divorced and living on her own at twenty-ﬁ ve, reached a

similar conclusion:

You get your cards, and you do the best with it you can. So maybe
there is an ideal. The ideal is being able to take the punches as they
come. And take responsibility. Other than that, it doesn’t matter.

For most, “one size ﬁ ts all” no longer provides a viable moral road map for

navigating the shifting terrain of contemporary work and family life. While
some cling to settled certainties, the search for a ﬂ exible moral frame signals
a growing weariness with cultural conﬂ icts pitting different social groups
against each other. Reared in a predominantly white working-class suburb
where traditional families dominated, Nick took pride in giving his own
child the freedoms he did not have:

Today there are so many different ethnic groups, beliefs, religions.
Why is any speciﬁ c one the way to go? My son is gonna be six in a
couple of weeks, and I feel I’m doing a very good job by letting him
develop his own personality.

Eric, who has a similar background, agreed:

I was kind of forced down a road where, whether you believed in it or
not, this was the way you were gonna be raised. You had no choice. [So
I say] let children develop their own beliefs. Give them the opportu-
nity to see whether they like something or don’t instead of saying this
is the only right way to live. ’Cause that’s not how it is today.

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This expansive view of personal development coincides with a concern

for the morality of institutions. Many of my interviewees echo the growing
chorus of young voices who would like cultural debates to focus on social as
well as individual responsibility.

As Angel put it:

There’s bigger things to worry about than changes in American fam-
ilies—jobs, homelessness. Why are we so worried about the petty
things when there’s so much bigger things out there?

Wary of stigmatizing all but a few options, young adults from all back-

grounds want a moral frame that respects differences while also providing a
guide for individuals, families, and institutions. A number of national sur-
veys and polls report a growing fatigue among younger Americans with the
culture wars. A Pew survey found young adults are less concerned than older
generations about sexual activity before marriage (only 28 percent disapprove,
compared to 41 percent for those between 50 and 64) and living together
without being married (only 32 percent disapprove, compared to almost half
for the older group).

This study also revealed that nearly 60 percent of young

people agree with the statement, “It is all right for a couple to live together
without intending to get married.” Similar tolerance exists on matters relat-
ing to same-sex relationships, with only 40 percent of young people opposing
civil unions, compared to 48 percent for people between 50 and 64, and less
than half (46 percent) opposing gay marriage, compared to 63 percent for
the older group. Another poll, conducted by Greenberg, Quinlan, and Ross,
found even greater acceptance among young adults, with close to 60 percent
supporting gay marriage, compared to roughly 30 percent for the rest of the
nation.

They also found that most of these younger Americans (58 percent)

agree the country needs “to work harder at accepting and tolerating people
who are different, particularly gays” rather than “work harder at upholding
traditional values.”

All of these studies show that young Americans are far less divided on

social issues than the culture warriors suggest.

They attach less moral

stigma to family shifts and are loath to pass judgment on other people’s
private lives. The reluctance to designate one right way to create a family
and blend work with caretaking represents an effort to avoid hypocrisy while
afﬁ rming core values. Young adults now seek a practical morality that bal-
ances commitment with autonomy, takes account of situational contingen-
cies, stresses family processes over household forms, embraces diversity, and
resists dictating how others should live. This ideological strategy may not
help them ﬁ nd the right job or life partner, but it does reframe the discus-
sion to help them cope with an imperfect and highly uncertain world.

The

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alternative is to blame themselves and others for inescapable and irreversible
changes beyond their control.

Transcending the Impasse

Superﬁ cially, differences of gender, class, ethnicity, and family background
point to a widening gap between young women and men, rich and poor,
white and nonwhite, and traditional and nontraditional. Yet everyone
came of age amid diversifying families, and these shared experiences set
the stage for bridging their social divides. Even those who did not experi-
ence changes in their own households saw them occurring in the lives of
their friends, neighbors, and relatives. They inherited a changing economic
and social landscape in which the rise of new family and gender options
coincided with the decline of traditional jobs. These basic social shifts have
created both new opportunities and new uncertainties, which bind young
adults together despite their demographic diversity. In fact, behavioral dif-
ferences, such as the poor’s propensity to marry less often than other income
groups, stem more from differences in resources and opportunities than
from differences in values.

As they prepare for an uncertain future, young women and men face some

shared dilemmas. Convinced that the “organizational career” is a dwindling
relic of an earlier era, they hope to tailor their own careers to better accom-
modate the ebb and ﬂ ow of family life and to redeﬁ ne the ideal worker. In
search of a new work-family partnership, they hope to blur the boundaries
between home and work and to redeﬁ ne the ideal partner. Facing tough alter-
natives in their own lives, they resist judging the private choices of others
or limiting themselves to a narrow range of options. Searching for a moral
framework that retains core values while acknowledging new social realities,
they stress the importance of supportive interpersonal processes rather than
speciﬁ c family forms.

These private responses to socially constructed dilemmas offer clues about

which collective solutions might reach across the gender divide and transcend
the culture wars. Most young adults do not want to turn back the clock; they
want instead to combine the traditional value of forging a lifelong commit-
ment with the contemporary values of living a balanced life and creating a
ﬂ exible, egalitarian partnership. As daunting as the obstacles are, the depth
and breadth of these converging aspirations should not be underestimated.
They teach us to worry less about the values of new generations and more
about how to reduce the institutional barriers to enacting their ideals.

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215

their experiences show how and why some families are able to respond to
and even surmount the inevitable obstacles of twenty-ﬁ rst-century life by
fashioning ﬂ exible gender strategies for earning and caretaking. Finally, their
current actions and future outlooks show how people’s “values” are actually a
mix of abstract ideals and practical strategies. Enacted values entail a compli-
cated compromise between the lives people want to create and the lives they
must construct out of existing social resources and constraints. In all of these
ways, the life histories of this generation point toward a general framework
for understanding how people negotiate the uncertainties of contemporary
adulthood.

families—and lives—as pathways

American families have become more ﬂ uid as well as more diverse than ever
before.

Regardless of what form a family takes at any moment, it will likely

change shape as time passes. Some of these changes are predictable, such as
the birth of children and their passage through school and out of the home.
But many others are unpredictable. Adult commitments are more voluntary
and changeable, work careers less stable, and mothers more committed to the
workplace. These new options for adults have created new domestic contexts
for their offspring. As today’s children grow, their families are prompted,
and indeed compelled, to change in ways that are neither determined nor
foreseeable.

Fundamental changes in the life course of families underlie the broad

categories of family type. Family paths can lead in promising or dismaying
directions, but the starting point does not determine the destination. Most
no longer move predictably from marriage to childbearing and rearing to the
empty nest. From a child’s birth to the time she or he leaves home, separation
or divorce can transform a two-parent household into a single-parent home,
and remarriage can change a single-parent home into a two-parent one.
A two-earner home can become traditional if a mother withdraws from the
workplace, while a traditional home can shift to a dual-earner one if she takes
a paid job. Families are situations in ﬂ ux, not ﬁ xed arrangements. Labels
such as “dual-earner,” “single-parent,” and “traditional” are only snapshots,
while family life is a moving picture. Seeing families as pathways captures
the ways they encounter a variety of unexpected challenges and undergo a
host of unforeseen changes.

Yet obvious changes in family composition tell only part of the story.

Despite the conventional wisdom that a family’s form determines a child’s
well-being, my informants report that family support can expand or erode

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amid a variety of domestic contexts and transitions. Seemingly discrete
events, such as a parental breakup or a mother’s decision to work, can be part
of a larger process that undermines a child’s emotional or economic security,
but they can also put a home on the path toward more security and support.
A family’s long-term ability to resolve speciﬁ c conﬂ icts is more consequen-
tial than the form a household takes at any one point along the way. Beyond
drawing simple—and overly deterministic—associations between forms and
outcomes, we need to explore the forces that shape family trajectories.

gender ﬂ

exibility in earning and caretaking

Postindustrial life poses risks and challenges to all types of households.
Single-parent and dual-earning homes may face difﬁ culties balancing and
apportioning paid with domestic work, but sole-breadwinner homes also face
perplexing dilemmas when a father feels overburdened at work or a mother
feels dissatisﬁ ed at home. Though a family’s challenges depend on its eco-
nomic position and current type, few remain immune from intensifying
work-family conﬂ icts, rising expectations for intimate relationships, and the
persisting devaluation of domestic work.

Why did some children conclude that their homes became more support-

ive and stable after facing these inevitable challenges? Why did others recount
a cascade of destabilizing events? How did some homes overcome the obsta-
cles while others did not? Across diverse family pathways, a child’s percep-
tion depended on whether parents and other caretakers were able to develop
ﬂ exible gender strategies in the face of crises and challenges. When families
faced economic squeezes and declining parental morale, homes where adults
transgressed gender boundaries in breadwinning and parenting were better
equipped to meet a child’s economic and emotional needs. In some cases, mar-
riages became more stable as a mother went to work and overcame demoral-
ization or helped an overburdened father. In other cases, a parental breakup
relieved domestic conﬂ ict or led to the departure of an unstable parent, while
also prompting a caretaking parent to get back on her or his feet. In still other
cases, a more collaborative remarriage provided much-needed ﬁ nancial and
psychological support. The common element uniting these different circum-
stances is the ability and willingness of parents and other caretakers to cross
gender boundaries and blur gender distinctions in search of more effective and
satisfying ways to bring in money and provide care. Mothers going to work,
fathers becoming more involved in child rearing, and others joining in the
work of caregiving—all of these efforts helped families overcome unexpected
difﬁ culties and create more harmonious homes. They also nourished parental

f i n i s h i n g t h e g e n d e r r e v o l u t i o n

217

morale, increased a home’s ﬁ nancial security, and provided inspiring models
of adult resilience.

In contrast, when mothers, fathers, and others could not transcend ﬁ xed

gender divisions that failed to provide sufﬁ cient ﬁ nancial support or per-
sonal satisfaction, children watched their caretakers endure unhappy mar-
riages, dissatisfying jobs, and the absence of an economic or caretaking safety
net. Sometimes a marriage deteriorated when parents clung to a strict divi-
sion of labor despite an unhappy mother or a father unable to support the
household. Sometimes dual-earner marriages became enmeshed in chronic
power struggles and cycles of conﬂ ict when a mother had to “do it all” or a
father resented egalitarian sharing. Sometimes abandonment—most often
a father’s—brought emotional turmoil and ﬁ nancial insecurity when the
remaining parent—most often a mother—struggled to ﬁ nd new ways to
support the family or create an identity beyond wife and mother. Sometimes
children (and their parents) lost critical support when nonparental ﬁ gures
were no longer able to provide money or care. Like the paths to improv-
ing fortunes, these varied developments also share a common element. The
inability to develop more ﬂ exible strategies for breadwinning and caretak-
ing left these families unable to sustain an emotionally or economically
secure home.

All in all, when families could develop ﬂ exible approaches to breadwin-

ning and caregiving, this helped them overcome economic uncertainties and
interpersonal tensions. More rigid responses left them ill prepared to cope
with unexpected contingencies. Amid a social and economic landscape that
is undermining the once clearly drawn divisions between earning and caring,
gender ﬂ exibility provides an indispensable way for a rising number of fami-
lies to prepare for and adapt to twenty-ﬁ rst-century uncertainties.

values as ideals and strategies

Focusing on family paths and gender strategies helps resolve the debate about
the fate of family values. It is easy to see how blurred gender boundaries
and unprecedented family diversity prompt some pundits, politicians, and
academics to highlight rising culture wars, gender conﬂ ict, declining fami-
lies, and apathetic youth, but those who experienced these changes ﬁ rsthand
tell a different—and more complex—story. These resilient and hopeful, but
cautious, women and men are grappling with a clash between their highest
ideals and their worst fears.

If we deﬁ ne family values in terms of our highest ideals, then they are not

declining. Most women and men from all types of backgrounds hope to build

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t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

a satisfying lifelong partnership with ﬂ exible and egalitarian sharing. In fact,
even though marriage has never been more voluntary, it remains overwhelm-
ingly popular. How else to explain the ﬁ ght for the right to marry among
same-sex couples, who aspire to join an institution largely taken for granted
by heterosexual couples?

By almost any measure, from their desire to marry

and have children to their hope to make their partnerships last and their
children safe, young women and men overwhelmingly afﬁ rm the intrinsic
importance of family life.

Once we add people’s expectations and strategies to the mix, however, the

matter of values becomes more complicated.

Left with an ambiguous mix of

afﬁ rming and demoralizing experiences, most young adults are both hopeful
and skeptical. After watching their parents and others contend with marital
uncertainty and work-family conﬂ icts, they are guarded about the chances
of achieving their own goals. From observing and working in “family-
unfriendly” jobs, they know it will be hard to integrate family and work, and
with high standards for a relationship, they are reluctant to place their fate in
the hands of another. In the end, as Maria declared, planning one’s life around
a set of elusive ideals may be dangerous and foolish:

Sometimes I ask myself if it’s unrealistic to want everything. I think a
lot of people will settle for something that is not what they wished.

And Mark, whose professional parents divorced, sounded a similar note:

I make decisions based on the best scenario for that time period. Espe-
cially in today’s world, it’s very situational.

Despite their converging ideals, young women and men have reached dif-

ferent conclusions about how to prepare for a future strewn with obstacles
and risks. Their divergent fallback positions create a gulf between the many
women who fear the dangers of ceding self-reliance and the many men who
resist the costs of equal parenting. This mismatch may signal a new gender
divide, but it does not reﬂ ect a decline in moral values or a deeply entrenched
and internalized gender chasm. The gender gap in aspirations has closed to
a remarkable degree, with most women wishing to be earners, most men
wishing to be involved parents, and most people seeking a balance between
the two. If a gap between women’s self-reliant strategies and men’s neotradi-
tional ones is widening, this stems from intensifying conﬂ icts between time-
demanding jobs and a dearth of supports at home.

Whether they grew up in a more ﬂ exible home or one with a more rigid

division of tasks, women and men desire more balanced and egalitarian lives,
but these widely shared ideals have outpaced young people’s ability to achieve

f i n i s h i n g t h e g e n d e r r e v o l u t i o n

219

them. The social organization of work and caretaking, which still largely pre-
sumes a caregiver at home and a breadwinner supporting the household, can
meet neither the wishes nor the needs of most twenty-ﬁ rst-century families.
An unﬁ nished gender revolution has created a conﬂ ict between new values and
resistant institutions. As long as new generations confront these contradictory
pressures, they will move guardedly toward complicated strategies that bal-
ance their most idealistic aspirations with their more realistic concerns.

From Individual to Collective Responsibility

Will the children of the gender revolution be able to integrate work and care,
or will they remain torn between equally laudable but incompatible goals?
Will they be able to create uplifting family paths for their own children or
will this desire wilt under the weight of uncertain relationships and insecure
jobs? Just as their parents’ lives developed during the rise of ﬂ uid marriages,
work-committed women, and time-demanding jobs, new generations’ paths
will depend on how arrangements at work, at home, and in their neighbor-
hoods shape their options. They will, to paraphrase Marx’s famous declara-
tion, make history, but not under conditions of their own choosing.

Deeply rooted and irreversible forces have undermined both stable mar-

riage and clear gender boundaries. The classic division of moral labor between
caretaking women and income-producing men makes little sense in a world
where families depend on women’s earnings and intimate relationships fol-
low unpredictable paths. If the paradigm of separate spheres divided along
gender lines no longer provides a practical guide, its demise also offers an
unprecedented opportunity to create a new blueprint. And if we take seri-
ously both the ideals and needs of new generations, this new paradigm will
allow individuals and families to blend work and care in ﬂ exible, egalitarian
ways across their life paths.

How, then, can we create social policies that help transform this new blue-

print into real options? To draw on Reinhold Niebuhr’s celebrated prayer,
creating sound policy depends on having the serenity to accept what we can-
not change, the strength to change what we can, and the wisdom to know
the difference between the two. Amid an irreversible but unﬁ nished gender
revolution, we need to accept the inevitable aspects of change and then create
social policies to make change as humane and just as possible. That means
helping families successfully negotiate the unforeseen obstacles along their
diverse pathways and helping individuals implement their aspirations for
equality, ﬂ exibility, and balance.

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t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

supporting family pathways

No society can guarantee a smooth, stable life path for everyone, but
deeply anchored and intertwined social shifts make today’s pathways espe-
cially uncertain. No social policy can resurrect such mid-twentieth-century
arrangements as permanent marriage and stable jobs for men, both of which
allowed the homemaker-breadwinner household to become ascendant. But
we can create social supports to help twenty-ﬁ rst-century families weather
the kinds of challenges we know they will face.

Now that most families travel unpredictable paths, we need to help them

meet their responsibilities as their circumstances change. To retool social
policy to support the ﬂ uidity and diversity of actually existing families, we
also need to shift from searching for one “best” household type to fostering
constructive family processes. This shift takes adult responsibility seriously
without imposing one vision on everyone. It holds parents and other care-
takers responsible for good care, without judging how such care is provided
or who provides it. A focus on family processes also draws attention to the
social conditions that make good care possible. How can we help parents
stay involved in the lives of their children, whether or not they are mar-
ried or live together? How can we help mothers and fathers ﬁ nd fulﬁ lling,
well-paid jobs that also leave ample space for parenting? How can we help
young adults create ﬂ exible, egalitarian relationships that do not force them
to choose between ﬁ xed gender boundaries and going it alone? Since new
generations already support these goals, it is time to rethink the structural
and cultural logics of work and caretaking to take account of the changes in
individual lives.

valuing equality, ﬂ

exibility, and balance

Values reside in institutional practices no less than in individual minds. Yet
the institutions inherited by young women and men have not kept pace with
their hard-won desires for egalitarian relationships and the ﬂ exible integra-
tion of earning and caretaking. The collision between institutional logics and
individual aspirations creates contradictory forces, and only collective change
can provide genuine resolutions.

American political culture has long extolled both the work ethic and the

ethic of care, but our social institutions provide few avenues for blending
these values.

To the contrary, combining work accomplishment with lasting,

caring bonds is more a matter of good fortune and ample private resources
(enjoyed by the few) than a commonplace social pathway. In an institutional

f i n i s h i n g t h e g e n d e r r e v o l u t i o n

221

context that penalizes workers for taking out time and devalues care work,
whether paid or unpaid, the challenge is not to restore individual morality
but to create more moral institutions by restructuring work and the organi-
zation of care.

Restructuring Work

In a world where mothers are almost as likely as fathers to work throughout
their children’s lives, it is time to jettison the outdated model of an “ideal
worker” as someone who is willing and able to place his or her job before all
else, even during times of great family need. Workers willing and able to live
up to this ethos are a dwindling species, even among men. Among those who
work the longest hours and draw the largest ﬁ nancial rewards, most say they
would choose a better balance if the option were available and would also
sacriﬁ ce some income for more ﬂ exibility and control.

Today’s workers need both short- and long-term ﬂ exibility. As life expec-

tancy grows and people look forward to many decades in the workplace,
it makes little sense to raise the stakes on career-building just as the peak
family-building stage arrives. Not only does this shortsighted view handicap
women, who continue to bear a larger share of a family’s care work, but it
also leaves men wary about the costs of equal parenting and leaves families
ill equipped to respond to new contingencies. Creating ﬂ exible workplaces
and child supportive neighborhoods depends on a wide range of policies,
although some straightforward measures can begin the process.

Providing genuine work ﬂ exibility requires both formal policies and

informal work practices that banish the penalties attached to caregiving and
give workers more control over when and how to do their jobs.

Families

as well as individuals need ﬂ exibility. Decoupling essential beneﬁ ts, such as
health care, from full-time employment would give households more ﬂ ex-
ibility in developing their own work strategies. In a similar way, outlawing
“family responsibility discrimination” would protect mothers and fathers
from hidden penalties for using policies that are formally available but infor-
mally stigmatized.

Invigorating and enforcing gender antidiscrimination

policies would also help bring the importance of work ﬂ exibility to the fore.
Of course, formal policies are only as effective as the people who implement
them, and the key to any policy is creating supportive workplace cultures
that emanate from the top and suffuse throughout an organization.

In an era of expanding time obligations and declining job security, replac-

ing greedy jobs with ﬂ exible careers is a daunting prospect, but the alterna-
tive is a growing chasm between the structure of work and the realities of
workers’ lives. The good news is that the postindustrial workplace is well

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t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

suited for ﬂ exible approaches that focus on how well a job is done rather than
when or where it is performed. Far from harming productivity, ﬂ exibility
helps workers approach their jobs with more focus and commitment. Indeed,
shifts in the nature of jobs and the composition of the labor force make it
important that work ﬂ exibility is not reserved for parents and caregivers only.
Everyone has the right to ﬁ nd a reasonable balance in their lives, and satisﬁ ed
workers with rich personal ties make better workers whether or not they are
responsible for the care of children or other dependents.

Restructuring Caretaking

New generations also need child-supportive communities to help mothers
and fathers weather unexpected changes and blend caretaking with earning.
Diverse family forms are here to stay, and most will undergo some form of
change as their children grow to adulthood. When policies ignore children’s
increasing exposure to changes in their parents’ work and marital ties, they
leave children at serious risk. At a minimum, it is time to catch up with
the rest of the postindustrial world, where universal day care, mandated
parental leave, and other child-supportive arrangements are integral aspects
of social policy.

Compared to other postindustrial nations, the United States lags woe-

fully behind in the supports it offers families. Of the twenty-one richest
countries in the world, only the United States and Australia do not mandate
paid parental leave, and among the industrialized Western nations, only the
United States does not mandate paid vacations.

France offers mothers paid

leave for six weeks before a baby is due and ten weeks after the birth, with a
guarantee of return to her job. Fathers can also take up to eleven days of paid
leave after the birth of a baby, and parents can share up to three years of leave
time without risk of losing their jobs. The French preschool program is avail-
able to all children ages three to ﬁ ve, and all teachers have a master’s degree
and earn a living wage. Closer to home, Canada offers employment insurance
for both maternity and paternity leave, allowing a couple to take up to ﬁ fty
weeks’ leave, which can be divided between mother and father.

Parental supports for caretaking are necessary, but they are not sufﬁ cient

if they reinforce gender inequality in parenting. The most effective poli-
cies take fathers’ caretaking as seriously as they do mothers’. In France and
Sweden, fathers can take seven weeks of paid leave, and another ten countries
provide between two days and six weeks for fathers. In these cases, a father’s
leave is available in addition to a mother’s, and, most important, it is not
transferrable.

By making fathers’ participation in child care a matter of

national policy, such “use it or lose it” policies provide strong encouragement

f i n i s h i n g t h e g e n d e r r e v o l u t i o n

223

for men to be involved. Equally consequential, they make it clear that all
parents have the right to care for their children without risking their jobs,
ﬁ nancial well-being, or work identities.

Egalitarian approaches, which eschew gender divisions, are also the most

likely to provide for the collective good. In fact, postindustrial nations that
support mothers’ employment and fathers’ parental involvement enjoy sta-
ble fertility rates, while nations with “maternalist” and other policies that
encourage mothers’ full-time homemaking face a birth dearth. Policies that
ignore women’s needs for equality invite them to resist public injunctions
that are at odds with their own desires.

Alongside supports for parenting equality, children at all life stages, from

early childhood to late adolescence, also need wider neighborhood and com-
munity supports. Children need a wide network to help them negotiate the
unexpected twists and turns in their own lives as well as in their parents’
relationships and work circumstances. While recent U.S. social policy has
focused on “restoring marriage” rather than providing direct support to
children, the causal relationship needs to ﬂ ow in the other direction. Social
programs that foster a wide web of interpersonal ties for children, through
after-school and enhanced educational programs as well as community-based
child care, will not only help children directly but also enhance their parents’
ability to resolve work-family conﬂ icts and strengthen their relationships.

Since families take a variety of forms and change their shape as children grow
to adulthood, there are many ways to meet children’s needs—but assuming
that all, or even most, children can depend on a privatized household with a
stay-at-home parent is not one of them.

Creating Options, Not Utopia

Social policies can foster the structural and cultural foundations for gender
ﬂ exibility in public and private life, but they cannot make every marriage
succeed or every adult a superlative parent. Private life, by deﬁ nition, involves
developmental conﬂ icts, and postindustrial conditions make the path to and
through adulthood unknowable. The once predictable stages of adult life
have become an indeﬁ nite trajectory in and out of various living arrange-
ments and personal commitments, and no social policy can guarantee an easy
path or restore older certainties.

Yet the aim of social policy should not be to create a utopia. One person’s

perfect life is another’s nightmare, and any attempt to impose a singular
vision on a complex, diverse society is a recipe for failure that inevitably pro-
vokes a backlash. The rise and fall of the idealized homemaker-breadwinner
family, which left many feeling conﬁ ned and others feeling marginalized,

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t h e u n f i n i s h e d r e v o l u t i o n

should make us cautious about imposing another inﬂ exible blueprint to
replace it. We need to resist the temptation to look for uniform solutions to
highly personal struggles. The goal of ﬂ exibility presumes that people will
live in diverse ways and change their behavior as new circumstances permit
or require. Equality does not mean sameness, but rather the right to shape
and reshape our lives as we deem best in the face of new challenges and
opportunities.

Certainly, the children of the gender revolution have learned this lesson.

The challenge now is to create institutions ﬂ exible enough to support them
through inevitable, but unpredictable, crises and to help them prevail when
anticipated and unanticipated obstacles emerge. Egalitarian workplaces and
child-supportive communities will not usher in a new utopia, but they will
help families follow improving paths and avoid declining ones. They will
help young adults balance autonomy and commitment in their relationships
and integrate work and caretaking in their own lives. They will help young
women build family commitments that do not pull them back to an outdated
traditionalism or leave them overburdened by having to do it all. They will
help young men act in more caring and egalitarian ways at home and at
the workplace. They will offer “bridging” supports for families in transition.
And they will provide care and economic security for children, whether or
not their parents forge a lasting bond or ﬁ nd stable jobs.

No social policy can or should eliminate the intrinsic tensions of grow-

ing up, creating an identity, and forging a satisfying life path, but policies
fostering gender justice, work-family integration, and community support
for children can provide the resources to help citizens meet these inevitable
challenges. These goals are not just lofty ideals. In the context of irreversible
change, they are necessities for individual and collective well-being.

Shifting the Frame

However much it is needed, institutional change needs commensurate cul-
tural change. Amid a widespread and irreversible generational shift, it is time
to reframe the debate about its implications. Despite widespread changes in
individual aspirations, our public discourse continues to presume old dichoto-
mies—between public and private, earning and caregiving, selﬂ ess women and
achieving men—that no longer speak to the lives we live or the ideals we seek.

As young women and men grapple with their own conﬂ icts about work,

marriage, and parenthood, they are ready to abandon a search for the one best
family form and to jettison a rhetoric that blames families for conditions

f i n i s h i n g t h e g e n d e r r e v o l u t i o n

225

beyond their control. They also wish to transcend a framework of forced-choice
options, whether between equality and commitment or personal fulﬁ llment
and children’s welfare. Despite—or perhaps because of—their diverse experi-
ences, women and men are weary of the judgmental, and ultimately unhelp-
ful, politics of division. They prefer a politics that eschews ﬁ nger-pointing
in favor of a more tolerant vision. And even though they remain skeptical
about the prospects for resolving this seemingly intractable political stale-
mate, their outlooks are converging on a new cultural and political frame
that stresses their similar needs rather than putting social groups in conﬂ ict.
Instead of a stalemated political debate, they long for policy approaches that
offer real solutions to their shared problems.

The good news is that across family, gender, class, and ethnic divides,

young people share common—and admirable—values, including a desire for
balance, fairness, and equality in their public and private lives. These aspira-
tions point toward a more inclusive politics that unites apparently disparate
groups and replaces an image of moral decline with a more constructive con-
cern about how to realign our social institutions to meet new personal and
family needs. Focusing on institutions rather than individuals afﬁ rms our
shared values and offers a way to reach across our divides, bringing together
men and women, workers and parents, the time-poor and the income-poor
around jointly held needs and aspirations. The best family values can only
be achieved by creating responsive workplaces that support parental involve-
ment and ensure equal opportunity, by building child-friendly communities
that sustain all families, and by helping new generations weather the unpre-
dictable turns their lives will take.

The young women and men who came of age amid the gender and fam-

ily revolution have little choice but to create innovative pathways. Their
lives attest to the ability of ordinary people to overcome life’s difﬁ culties,
ﬁ nd meaning in their personal strategies, and remain hopeful in the face of
daunting obstacles. Most had positive experiences with mothers who worked
and parents who strove for ﬂ exibility, and those reared with a caring support
network and sufﬁ cient economic security did well. Regardless of the paths
their own families took, most hope to build on the lessons of childhood and
early adulthood by seeking equality and ﬂ exibility in their own lives.

Yet new generations have good reason to remain cautious about their

chances of achieving these ideals. Without social supports for more versatile
ways of caretaking and breadwinning, they will have to cope as best they can,
searching for private solutions to public problems.

If they are to prevail

rather than just survive, they need to rely on institutions that support their
loftiest goals rather than speaking to their greatest fears.

A P P E N D I X 1 : L I S T O F R E S P O N D E N T S A N D S A M P L E

D E M O G R A P H I C S

table a.1 List of Respondents

Name*

Racial identity

Class background

Age

Women

Alicia

African-American

Working

Amanda

Asian

Middle

Angela

White

Middle

Anita

Latina

Working

Annie

White

Middle

Ashley

African-American

Working

Barbara

White

Poor

Brianna

African-American

Poor

Catherine

Latina

Middle

Chandra

African-American

Middle

Chrystal

African-American

Poor

Claudia

White

Middle

Connie

White

Working

Danisha

African-American

Working

Dolores

Latina

Working

Donna

White

Poor

Elizabeth

White

Middle

Ellen

White

Working

Erica

White

Middle

Hannah

White

Middle

Isabella

Latina

Working

(continued )

228

| a p p e n d i x 1 : l i s t o f r e s p o n d e n t s a n d s a m p l e d e m o g r a p h i c s

table a.1 (continued)

Name

Racial identity

Class background

Age

Janet

White

Middle

Jasmine

African-American

Poor

Jennifer

White

Working

Jessica

Asian

Middle

Karen

White

Middle

Kayla

African-American

Middle

Keisha

Latina

Poor

Kristen

White

Working

Lauren

White

Middle

Leila

African-American

Middle

Letitia

Latina

Poor

Louise

White

Working

Lynne

White

Working

Maria

Latina

Middle

Mariela

Latina

Working

Megan

White

Working

Melissa

Asian

Middle

Michelle

Asian

Middle

Miranda

Latina

Working

Monique

African-American

Poor

Nancy

Asian

Middle

Nicole

White

Middle

Nina

Asian

Poor

Olivia

African-American

Working

Patricia

White

Middle

Rachel

White

Middle

Rebecca

White

Middle

Rosa

Latina

Poor

Samantha

Latina

Poor

Sarah

White

Middle

Serena

African-American

Working

Sharon

White

Middle

Shauna

African-American

Working

Stephanie

White

Middle

Suzanne

White

Middle

Tamika

African-American

Working

Tasha

African-American

Middle

Theresa

Latina

Working

Tiffany

Latina

Working

a p p e n d i x 1 : l i s t o f r e s p o n d e n t s a n d s a m p l e d e m o g r a p h i c s

229

Men

Adam

White

Middle

Alex

White

Working

Allen

White

Middle

Andrew

White

Middle

Angel

Latino

Working

Antonio

Latino

Working

Brandon

African-American

Middle

Brian

White

Working

Bruce

White

Middle

Carlos

Latino

Working

Chris

Latino

Middle

Daniel

White

Working

David

White

Middle

Dwayne

African-American

Working

Eduardo

Latino

Working

Eric

White

Middle

Gabriel

White

Middle

Greg

White

Middle

Hal

White

Working

Hank

White

Working

Howard

White

Working

Isaiah

African-American

Poor

Jamal

African-American

Poor

James

White

Working

Jason

White

Middle

Jeff

White

Middle

Jermaine

African-American

Poor

Jerome

African-American

Poor

Jim

White

Working

Joel

White

Working

Jonathan

White

Middle

Joseph

White

Working

Josh

White

Working

Justin

Asian

Middle

Ken

White

Middle

Kevin

White

Middle

Lawrence

White

Middle

Lucius

African-American

Poor

Luis

Latino

Working

Manny

Latino

Working

(continued )

230

a p p e n d i x 1 : l i s t o f r e s p o n d e n t s a n d s a m p l e d e m o g r a p h i c s

f i g u r e a . 1 Sample demographics.

table a.1 (continued)

Name

Racial identity

Class background

Age

Mark

White

Middle

Matthew

White

Middle

Michael

African-American

Working

Mitch

White

Middle

Nate

African-American

Poor

Nick

White

Working

Noah

White

Middle

Patrick

White

Working

Paul

White

Middle

Peter

White

Middle

Phil

White

Working

Ray

African-American

Working

Richard

White

Middle

Sam

White

Working

Shawn

African-American

Poor

Steve

White

Middle

Thomas

White

Middle

Todd

White

Middle

Wayne

African-American

Poor

William

White

Middle

To protect conﬁ dentiality and anonymity, all names are pseudonyms.

• Sample size:
120

• Gender
breakdown:
50% women
50% men

• Age 18 to 32,
average 24

• 5% lesbian or
gay

17%

22%

55%

Asian

Latino/Latina

African-

American

Non-Hispanic

White

Racial and Ethnic Distribution

46%

38%

16%

Middle or

upper middle

class

Working class

Poor or near poor

Economic Background

27%

33%

36%

Traditional

or modified

traditional

Stable dual

earner

Parent died

Separated

and re-

united

Divorced or

never

married

60%

40%

Stable Two-Parent Home

Single-Parent Home

232

a p p e n d i x 2 : s t u d y i n g s o c i a l a n d i n d i v i d ua l c h a n g e

were young enough to have experienced change close at hand, yet old enough
to look back on the full trajectory of their childhood as well as forward to their
own future. About half of my sample were younger than twenty-ﬁ ve and half
were twenty-ﬁ ve or older, but no major differences emerged between these
groups.

Some younger respondents were understandably tentative when dis-

cussing their future plans, but the substantive content of their responses did
not diverge from their older peers.

Although practical considerations made it necessary to restrict my sam-

pling to the New York metropolitan area, the randomly selected respondents
grew up in all corners of the United States, from Texas and South Carolina to
California and Illinois. At the time of the interview, they resided in a variety
of neighborhoods, from the suburbs and exurbs to diverse outer- and inner-
city communities.

While studies in other regions of the country might yield

somewhat different percentage breakdowns among different family paths and
gender strategies, the general processes and tensions of change are likely to be
similar. Most Americans live in large metropolitan areas, and no region of the
country has been insulated from family and gender change.

Two-thirds of my sample was chosen as part of a larger study compar-

ing the children of immigrants to children with native-born parents.

ensure my respondents had been born and reared in the United States,
they were drawn entirely from the native-born sample.

These names

were supplemented with another group of respondents randomly selected
from enrollees of a continuing education program, which enlarged the
sample to include a sufﬁ cient number of college graduates.

After receiving a letter of introduction and a follow-up phone call, 85 per-

cent agreed to participate in a face-to-face interview, which typically took
place at the respondent’s residence. I personally conducted eighty interviews
and relied on two gifted research assistants for the remaining forty. Their help
made it possible to enlarge the sample size, and their interviews enriched the
insights from my own ﬁ eld work.

Class, Race, and Ethnic Diversity

This sampling procedure yielded respondents who represented the ethnic,
racial, and class diversity of twenty-ﬁ rst-century America. Since my goal was
to discover how—and, indeed, if—diverse social, cultural, and economic
contexts shape childhood experiences and later life chances, it was impor-
tant to include people with a range of ethnic and racial identities and class
backgrounds.

a p p e n d i x 2 : s t u d y i n g s o c i a l a n d i n d i v i d ua l c h a n g e

233

A diverse sample makes it possible to discover the similarities and dif-

ferences among class and ethnic groups, but it also poses challenges of inter-
pretation when the sample has too few cases to explore subtle differences
among subgroups or to subject them to statistical tests of signiﬁ cance.

intensive qualitative study cannot, by deﬁ nition, include enough respon-
dents to make multiple subgroup comparisons or to draw strict statisti-
cal conclusions, but it does offer offsetting opportunities to discover and
develop theoretical arguments to explore and test with larger samples. My
ﬁ ndings may not foretell the precise breakdowns a large national sample
would provide, but they are comparable to the ﬁ ndings of census and opin-
ion surveys.

Rather than focusing on discrete variables, my approach more closely

aligns with those who argue for the “intersectionality” of such master catego-
ries as race, class, and gender. In contrast to statistical analyses, which strive
to isolate the independent effects of speciﬁ c variables, I sought to understand
how markers of difference, such as race, class, and sexual orientation, can
operate as holistic packages.

As important, my goal was to ascertain how

people with varied backgrounds and identities experience broad social shifts
in both similar and different ways. The family and gender revolution may
have had different consequences for different social groups, but it has swept
over everyone like a tidal wave.

Constructing and Conducting Life History Interviews

While surveys with multiple-choice answers have the advantage of large
numbers and ethnographies offer direct observation, lengthy, probing inter-
views provide a uniquely powerful technique for my purposes. Compared
to surveys, in-depth interviews make it possible to probe for the nuances
in experiences and outlooks, to follow up on unanticipated ﬁ ndings, and to
investigate the processes that link “causes” and “effects” identiﬁ ed by quan-
titative techniques. Compared to ethnographic observation, one-on-one
interviews make it possible to explore the whole life span, to discover the
meaning and motives for observable behavior, and to chart developmental
trajectories.

Since people more easily and accurately recall speciﬁ c life events when

they are placed in a chronological narrative, an open-ended but highly struc-
tured questionnaire asked people to describe their lives in sequential order.
Starting with early childhood (or, as the questions stated, “as far back as you
can remember”) and moving to and through adolescence to early adulthood,

234

a p p e n d i x 2 : s t u d y i n g s o c i a l a n d i n d i v i d ua l c h a n g e

respondents were asked to recount critical events, stages, and turning points
and to reﬂ ect on the meaning of these experiences. At each step, the interview
probed for the context surrounding an event, the person’s immediate reac-
tions, and her or his views today. It also encouraged respondents to express
ambivalent reactions and contradictory views.

The interviews were lengthy, lasting from two to more than four hours

and averaging about three, and at their best became a conversation in which
the respondent reﬂ ected not only on the “what and when” of important life
events, but also on the “how, why, and with what consequences.” As with all
self-reporting, answers to these kinds of questions are inevitably colored by a
person’s particular perceptual lens, and “objective facts” ultimately rest in the
eye of the respondent. Self-reports are, by deﬁ nition, socially embedded con-
structs that evolve over time, but personal accounts are not invalid because
they are subjective. Self-reports take seriously the importance of meaning-
making in social life by offering an in-depth look at how people interpret
and reinterpret their experiences and how these interpretations inform their
actions and worldviews.

Because people possess varying degrees of awareness and insight, they

vary in their ability—and willingness—to search for thoughtful answers.
Yet, with few exceptions, my interviewees were able to describe important
events with remarkable clarity and enthusiasm. Despite the common belief
that it is more difﬁ cult to report on the past than the present, a temporal per-
spective often helps people provide more conﬁ dent answers about life experi-
ences and their signiﬁ cance.

Of course, not all in-depth interviews are equally revealing, but an inter-

viewer’s job is to gain as much information as possible from each respondent
and then to place them all in a comparative context. The most revealing
interviews yielded unexpected ﬁ ndings that did not conﬁ rm my own or oth-
ers’ preconceived theoretical assumptions, but every interview contributed to
the development of theoretical insights about the link between social forces
and individual actions and motives.

Developing a Theoretical Framework

The challenge in analyzing qualitative material is to use thick description to
build or reframe theory. This process takes place initially as insights drawn
from early interviews help inform later ones and then when all the interviews
have been collected, transcribed, and subjected to a comparative analysis.

Beyond the many unique, compelling stories, I sought to discover general

a p p e n d i x 2 : s t u d y i n g s o c i a l a n d i n d i v i d ua l c h a n g e

235

patterns and to make sense of surprising, counterintuitive ﬁ ndings, especially
about the link between social contexts and individual strategies (put differ-
ently, between “structure” and “agency”) as a person’s life took shape and
direction. The questionnaire structure provided a frame for charting devel-
opmental paths, for distinguishing intended from unanticipated change, and
for mapping the links between life events and the meanings people extracted
from them and used to formulate life strategies.

Summarizing complex personal biographies and ﬁ nding the common

threads among them is a humbling task, but it can yield new ways of explain-
ing puzzling “social facts.” In this study, I soon found that prevailing concep-
tual frameworks neither accurately described my respondents’ experiences nor
accounted for their life paths. Like once stylish clothing that has lost its ﬁ t,
the standard categories that rely on family type did not ﬁ t the realities of most
people’s lives. Even those who lived in a home outwardly resembling a “home-
maker-breadwinner,” “dual-earner,” or “single-parent” home went to great
lengths to explain how such a general category did not capture the ways their
family life shifted in form and function. In a similar way, in discussing their
current outlooks and plans, neither women nor men were comfortable with
unidimensional categories contrasting traditional with egalitarian “attitudes.”

As the analysis proceeded, my respondents’ accounts pointed to a different

conceptual framework. Focusing on the paths families took rather than the
forms they assumed at any given moment led me to group families by how
well—or poorly—they were able to adapt in the face of change. Although
this conceptual frame necessarily mixed family types ordinarily seen as fun-
damentally different, it provided a way to explain the variation within tradi-
tional demographic categories.

In the analysis of young adult plans and strategies, the more common

approach of comparing women’s and men’s attitudes also yielded puzzling,
contradictory results. Both women and men expressed remarkably similar
beliefs and convictions, but they were pursuing varied and complex life
strategies. Only by teasing out a distinction between professed ideals and
practically grounded actions and plans was it possible to make sense of this
paradox.

Analysis and Evaluation

Although the task of research is to analyze ﬁ ndings, not evaluate them, my
respondents did not shy away from making their own evaluations. Some pro-
vided uplifting narratives, while others offered disheartening ones. Most drew

Chapter One

  1.  The term “sex role” implies, and often explicitly assumes, that gender differ-
ences are intrinsic, static, and necessary for the smooth functioning of families and
societies. The concept has its roots in mid-twentieth-century theories of sex differ-
ences and especially in the work of Parsons and Bales (1955), which postulates that
women are (and should be) the “expressive specialists” and men the “instrument spe-
cialists” in families. As feminist sociologists and theorists have shown, the concept
is of limited use in explaining gender arrangements. Instead, gender (like class) is
a dynamic relationship that is embedded in social arrangements, reﬂ ects power dif-
ferences, and changes its shape across time and space. As Stacey and Thorne (1985)
pointed out in an early critique of the “sex roles” framework, we do not refer to “class
roles” or “race roles.” In my analysis, the term “role” is thus used only to refer to oth-
ers’ conceptions of ﬁ xed patterns of behavior.
  2.  As many analysts have noted, it is important to distinguish between the con-
cepts of gender, sex, and sexuality. “Gender” is a social category that is distinct from
the biological categories of female and male. It is also multidimensional and can be
found at all levels of social life, from the institutional structuring of life chances to
the interpersonal dynamics between women and men to people’s internalized identi-
ties. Gender is linked to both sex and sexuality, but it is important to draw distinc-
tions among them so that we may examine their relationships with each other. See
Lorber (2005) for an in-depth discussion of these differences.
  3.  Because of its ubiquity, I use the term “traditional” to refer to the homemaker-
breadwinner household even though the term is misleading in some respects.
Although a majority of American households took this form for much of the 1950s,
the homemaker-breadwinner family is actually a relatively modern, short-lived
arrangement that rose to prominence in the mid-twentieth century, largely as a con-
sequence of post–World War II prosperity. Many groups never conformed to this
model, especially in working-class and minority communities where the cultural
ideal remained either out of reach or unappealing. In idealizing the “traditional”

N O T E S

238

n o t e s t o pa g e s 4 – 5

household, popular culture has also glossed over its less attractive aspects, such as
women’s frustrations with making domesticity the true test of womanhood and men’s
pressures to conform to deﬁ nitions of manhood stressing loyalty to a job and the “rat
race.” Despite cultural images of happy homemaking mothers and wise breadwin-
ning fathers, many housewives were dissatisﬁ ed, and many fathers did not feel that
they knew best. Such families could also be stiﬂ ing for the children who lived in
them and stigmatizing for those who did not. It is no accident that Betty Freidan’s
The Feminine Mystique (1963) and William H. Whyte’s The Organization Man (1956)
both touched a nerve of growing discontent. Indeed, the children born in this period
ultimately pioneered more diverse family forms. For a thorough overview of these
family trends and misconceptions, see Coontz (1992).
  4.  U.S. Census Bureau (2007). The Pew Research Center (2007a) reports that the
proportion of children born to unmarried mothers is at an all-time high of almost
37 percent, although about half of these nonmarital births are to cohabiting couples
(compared to about one-third ﬁ ve years ago). There is also a great deal of variation in
children’s living situations across racial groups, with the U.S. Census reporting that
17 percent of Asian children, 24 percent of non-Hispanic white children, 34 percent
of Hispanic children, and 65 percent of Black children are living with either one
parent or neither parent (Blow, 2008).
  5. Roberts (2008a, 2008c).
  6.  The divorce rate rose precipitously during the 1970s and 1980s and then lev-
eled off in the 1990s, with current estimates ranging from a high of 50 percent to
lower levels that can drop to around 40 percent. Couples with children living at
home are less likely to break up than other couples. The overall divorce rate, more-
over, masks differences across generations. The most commonly cited statistic that
half of marriages end in divorce actually refers to the expected lifetime divorce rate of
people married in the 1970s, but rates are lower for more recently married couples.
Among men who married in the 1970s, for example, about 23 percent had divorced
by the tenth year of marriage, but men married in the 1990s have a ten-year divorce
rate of only 16 percent (Carey and Parker-Pope, 2009).
  7.  Since many two-parent families represent remarriages, more than half of Amer-
icans are likely at some point to live in a stepfamily (Coleman and Ganong, 2008).

8. U.S. Census Bureau (2006a) and Galinsky et al. (2009). This ﬁ gure is consider-

ably higher than the 57 percent of women without children living at home who are
in the labor force, and that group includes older cohorts of women who did not join
the workforce in numbers comparable to younger generations. Another way to under-
stand these changes is to look at children’s living arrangements. Among all children
in 2000, only 21 percent lived in a two-parent household with an employed father and
a nonemployed mother, while 59 percent lived with an employed mother, including
41 percent who lived with two employed parents, 3 percent with an employed mother
and nonworking father, and 15 percent with an employed single mother ( Johnson
et al., 2005). The remaining children lived with either a single mother who did not
have a paid job (5 percent), a married couple where neither were employed (4 percent),
a father-only household (6 percent), or with neither parent (5 percent).

9. Today, women are more likely to work full-time and year-round, whether or not

they are employed in historically male professions or are mothers of young children

n o t e s t o pa g e s 5 – 9

239

(Percheski, 2008). Moreover, the deﬁ nition of “part-time” has expanded, including work-
weeks of up to forty hours in some highly demanding professions (Epstein et al., 1999).
10. See, for example, Uchitelle (2006), Greenhouse (2008), Warren and Tyagi
(2003), and Kalleberg (2007).
11.  Moen and Roehling (2005).
12. Ryder (1965) aptly referred to the life cycle of birth, aging, and death as the
“demographic metabolism” and pointed to the central role of young adults in imple-
menting social change.
13.  Changes in women’s and men’s places are at the core of work and family shifts,
and these shifts are reﬂ ected in the shape of institutions as well as in the actions of
individuals. Risman (1998), Lorber (1994), and Acker (1990) discuss how “gender”
is far more than an individual trait. West and Zimmerman (1987) see gender as a
set of relationships that are created as people “do gender” in their everyday interac-
tions. All of these frameworks stress the ways that gender is an institution and a
structure (rather than an immutable individual trait) that creates contradictions and,
in Lorber’s words, paradoxes.
14. Mills (1959). By drawing an inseparable link between the study of institutions
and individual lives, Mills also recognized that theory and method are different sides
of the same coin.
15.  There are many ways to deﬁ ne class. Since most could not accurately report their
parents’ incomes, parental occupation provides the most reliable measure of class back-
ground. People were classiﬁ ed as middle-class or upper-middle-class when they had at
least one parent who worked in a professional, managerial, or similar occupation. They
were deemed to have a working-class background if both parents or the only earner
worked in blue-collar, pink-collar, or other service or wage work not requiring a college
education. Children were considered to have grown up in poverty when one or both
parents depended on public assistance for a signiﬁ cant period during their upbringing.
16.  Each respondent was asked to identify the group they felt best described their
racial identity. Biracial and multiracial respondents were then asked to choose the
group with whom they most closely identiﬁ ed.
17.  Although I make no claims to exact statistical representativeness, my sample
reﬂ ects the general contours of U.S. family, class, and race diversity. This is especially
important because younger cohorts contain more racial and ethnic diversity than
older generations. The Population Reference Bureau reports “a growing racial/ethnic
divergence between America’s elderly population and younger age groups . . . While
the large majority of people over age 60 are non-Hispanic white, a substantial and
growing proportion of young people are racial or ethnic minorities” (Mather, 2007).
The Census Bureau reports that in 2000, 61 percent of U.S. children were non-
Hispanic  white,  15 percent were African-American, 17 percent were of Hispanic
origin, and about 4 percent were Asian ( Johnson et al., 2005). Appendix 1 presents a
list of respondents and summarizes their demographic characteristics, while Appen-
dix 2 discusses the study’s design rationale and sampling procedure.
18.  Despite a great deal of hand-wringing about the potential dire consequences
to children when mothers go to work or parents separate, there has been a surpris-
ing lack of curiosity about how children actually perceive and evaluate their par-
ents’ actions, especially once they are old enough to have developed a more nuanced

240

n o t e s t o pa g e s 9 – 1 5

perspective. Ellen Galinsky’s 1999 study of children’s views of their working parents
is a notable and exemplary exception, but adult children were not interviewed. This
book thus places the focus squarely on children who are sufﬁ ciently mature to reﬂ ect
on their childhood experience and its consequences. (Appendix 2 considers both the
signiﬁ cance and limitations of retrospective reports.)
19. For clarity, the term “work” generally refers to paid labor and the term “care-
taking” refers to unpaid domestic tasks. Both are genuine forms of labor, and care
work is as essential to a household’s survival as is bringing in an income. Indeed,
we often pay others outside the household to perform care work. It is nevertheless
important to distinguish between work and caretaking in order to analyze the differ-
ent inﬂ uences they exert in people’s lives. See Folbre (2008).
20. Zerubavel (1991) discusses the advantages of “mental ﬂ exibility,” which avoids
rigidity at one end of the mental spectrum and boundlessness at the other.
21. Anecdotal but high-proﬁ le stories have touted an “opt-out revolution,” to use
a term coined by Belkin (2003). Another New York Times article arguing that “Many
Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood” (Story, 2005) made the front
page even though it relied on a biased and soon discredited sample. Although the
debate about women opting out has centered largely on the reasons for this trend, a
number of analysts have shown the “opt-out revolution” to be an urban myth and a
highly misleading term. Boushey (2005, 2008), Cotter, England, and Hermsen (2007),
Percheski (2008), and Joan Williams (2007) provide ample evidence that such a turn of
events has been exaggerated and, in important respects, reﬂ ects trends among men as
well. Percheski reports, for example, that employment among college-educated women
in professional and managerial occupations has increased across generations, with less
than 8 percent of professional women out of the labor force for a year or more during
their prime childbearing years. Even though women’s labor force participation rates
have stopped rising, this stall has occurred at a very high level (well over 70 percent),
especially compared to several decades ago, when the rate hovered around 30 percent.
Today, women’s participation stands at almost 73 percent, down from a peak of almost
75 percent in 2000 (compared to men, whose participation rate has dropped from a
peak of 96 percent in 1953 to about 86 percent) (Uchitelle, 2008). While mothers
with children under the age of one show a small decline in their labor force participa-
tion compared to a peak in the late 1990s, mothers whose children are one or older
show no similar drop. In fact, the difference in employment rates between mothers and
childless women has declined. In sum, while women’s march into the workplace may
have reached a plateau, there is no widespread exodus of women (at any educational
level and marital status) from the world of paid work. Moreover, despite the persisting
perception that women leave work for family reasons and men because they lose their
jobs, the recent decline in women’s employment reﬂ ects blocked work opportunities in
a worsening economy as women and men join the ranks of the unemployed.

Chapter Two

1. Scott and Leonhardt (2005).
2. Harris (1998) provides a trenchant, if extreme, argument about the limits of
parental determinism.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 6 – 2 3

241

  3. Prominent proponents of the “family decline” perspective include Blanken-
horn (1995), Popenoe (1988, 1996), Popenoe, Elshtain, and Blankenhorn (1996),
and Whitehead (1997). Amato and Booth (1997) describe “a generation at risk”
amid family shifts.
  4.  For rebuttals to the “family decline” perspective, see, for example, Bengston,
Biblarz, and Roberts (2002), Coontz (1992, 2005), Kristin Moore et al. (2002),
Skolnick  (2006), Skolnick and Rosencrantz (1994), and Stacey (1990, 1996).
  5.  Among the burgeoning literature on how both paid and unpaid care work is
devalued, see, for example, England (2005), Folbre (2001, 2008), and Zimmerman,
Litt, and Bose (2006). Hochschild (1989) coined the term “stalled revolution” to
describe how needed changes in the workplace and men’s lives have failed to keep
pace with the new demands on women in dual-earner homes.
  6.  Most research demonstrates that diversity within family types, however deﬁ ned,
is as large as the differences between them. Acock and Demo (1994) show, for example,
that family composition does not predict children’s well-being. Parcel and Menag-
han (1994) make the same case for different forms of parental employment.

7. The proportion of my respondents who saw their mothers as strongly commit-

ted to paid work is lower than the actual proportion whose mothers held a paid job.
Even though about two-thirds of American mothers, including those with children
under six, now work for pay, fewer are employed full-time over a lengthy period. Over
the last several decades, however, women’s participation over the course of their lives
has come to resemble men’s. Despite the recent and relatively small drop among mar-
ried mothers, most women can expect to work at a paid job throughout their lives.
  8. A poll by the Pew Research Center (2007a) reported that many Americans
continue to worry that the employment of mothers with children under eighteen,
and especially full-time employment, poses problems for children and society at
large. Still, most mothers, whether or not they are employed, say they prefer either
full-time or part-time work to none at all.
  9.  Women and men with work-committed mothers are equally likely to believe
this was the best choice.
10.  Decades of research have found that, on the whole, children do not suffer when
their mothers work outside the home. Instead, a mother’s satisfaction with her situ-
ation, the quality of care a child receives, and the involvement of fathers and other
caretakers are more important factors (Harvey, 1999; Hoffman, 1987; Hoffman,
Wladis, and Youngblade, 1999; Galinsky, 1999; Clarke-Stewart and Allhusen, 2005;
Waldfogel, 2006). Bianchi (2000) and Bianchi, Robinson, and Milkie (2006) report
that contemporary mothers, including employed mothers, are actually spending
more time with their children, not less. Burchinal and Clarke-Stewart (2007) ﬁ nd
that the children of employed mothers do just as well in their cognitive development
and, among children in low-income families, they do better. Much research also
shows that, despite the difﬁ culties of balancing work and family, employed moth-
ers and two-income homes are, in the words of Barnett and Rivers (1996), “happier,
healthier, and better off.” Springer (2007) reports signiﬁ cant health beneﬁ ts for men
whose wives work. Those who see having an employed mother as harmful generally
point to thin research results that show small, temporary, and nonsigniﬁ cant nega-
tive effects of day care for a small number of children (Crouter and McHale, 2005).

242

n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 4 – 4 9

11.  In her study of more than 1,000 young people in the third through the twelfth
grades, Galinsky (1999) found that only 10 percent of children wished for more time
with their employed mothers and only 15.5 percent wished for more time with their
fathers. Instead, 34 percent of children wished their mothers would be less stressed
and tired, and 27.5 percent wished the same for their fathers.
12. Damaske (2009) shows how mothers rely on a “language of need” to account
for a wide range of work strategies, from pursuing a career to staying home to mov-
ing in and out of the labor force. Underlying this shared discourse, however, such
varied decisions are more likely to reﬂ ect differences in women’s satisfaction at work
and support at home.
13.  In the case of one- versus two-parent homes, children living with both biological
parents do appear on average to fare better, but most of the difference disappears after
taking account of the family’s ﬁ nancial resources and the degree of parental conﬂ ict prior
to a breakup. Most of the negative consequences of divorce can be traced to the high con-
ﬂ ict and emotional estrangement preceding a breakup and the loss of economic support
often following in its aftermath (Cherlin et al., 1991; Furstenberg and Cherlin, 1991;
McLanahan and Sandefur, 1994; Hetherington and Kelly, 2002). In a recent study of the
effects of divorce on children’s behavior, Li (2007) argues that “the dissolution of some
marriages decreases children’s behavior problems and the dissolution of others increases
children’s behavior problems, so that they cancel each other out when I totaled the aver-
age effect. . . . While certain divorces harm children, others beneﬁ t them.”
14. Amato and Booth (1997, p. 200). Rutter (2004) also ﬁ nds that children in
high-conﬂ ict families whose parents divorce fare better than children raised in high-
conﬂ ict families whose parents do not divorce. See also Li (2007).
15.  Wallerstein and Blakeslee (1989), Wallerstein, Lewis, and Blakeslee (2000), and
Elizabeth Marquardt (2005) argue that all divorces are harmful in the long run, with
a “sleeper effect” emerging many years later. In contrast, Ahrons (1994, 2004) and
Hetherington and Kelly (2002) point to the large variation in divorce’s consequences.
In Ahrons’ long-term study of divorce and its aftermath, she found that over one-third
of the grown children felt their parents’ marriage was more stressful than the divorce,
which came as a relief when it reduced the long-term daily conﬂ ict between parents.
16. Hochschild (1989) shows how gender strategies shape couples’ decisions about
how to manage “the second shift.” She refers to these arrangements as gender strate-
gies, but she focuses primarily on how these strategies reproduce gender divisions in
two-earner homes. I adopt a similar approach, but also examine when, how, and why
people’s strategies can undermine, blur, or change the nature of gender distinctions.
In my sample, there is no link between the direction of a family pathway and the race
or class backgrounds of respondents.

Chapter Three

1. See Bernard’s classic essay, “The Good-Provider Role: Its Rise and Fall” (1981).

2. Hays (1996) describes how an “ideology of intensive mothering” creates dou-
ble binds for contemporary women, who face strong cultural pressures to shower
children with time and attention and concentrate their time on parenting, whether
or not they hold jobs outside the home.

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  3.  According to a study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the per-
centage of single-parent homes headed by a father has jumped over the last decade.
Single-father families increased by 74 percent between 1990 and 2006, compared to
an increase of almost 24 percent in single-mother homes. In 2006, about 4.7 percent
of children lived in a single-father household, which is about 17 percent of all single-
parent families (Fremstad and Ray, 2006). Broken down by race, about 5 percent of
non-Hispanic white children live with a single father, while 4 percent of Black and
Hispanic children do so (Blow, 2008).
  4.  See, for example, Carrington (1999), Risman (1986), and Stacey and Biblarz
(2001). My study of the social roots of men’s paternal involvement (1993) shows
how a breakup can, in some contexts, prompt more involved fatherhood by requiring
custodial fathers to develop “mothering” skills. For an early analysis of the concept
of “good enough” parenting, see Bowlby (1969).
  5. The next chapter considers children’s views of how and why “problematic
breakups,” which conform more closely to our unfavorable images of divorce and
single parenthood, trigger or continue a downward slide.
  6.  In Constance Ahrons’s study of how divorced families fared over the long run,
about half of the grown children reported a closer relationship with their fathers,
who spent more dedicated time with them and attended more of their extracurricular
and school activities after the separation (Ahrons, 2004).
  7.  The next chapter considers what happens when custodial parents are unable to
make the journey toward more ﬂ exible gender strategies. When parents were unable
to master the multifaceted tasks of child rearing, children became more economically
and emotionally vulnerable. The more felicitous breakups in this chapter show why
such an outcome is not inevitable.
  8. See, especially, Furstenberg and Cherlin (1991), Cherlin et al. (1991), and
Marsiglio  (2004).
  9. Only 16 percent report a closer relationship with their biological father than
their stepfather, and the remaining 25 percent say they do not have a close relation-
ship with either their stepfather or father (Coleman and Ganong, 2008).
10. Not all remarriages have such beneﬁ cial consequences, and the next chapter
shows how unsuccessful remarriages can be part of a declining family trajectory. As
with marriage, it is important to look beyond the fact of a remarriage to its quality.
See, for example, Teachman (2008).
11.  Waite and Gallagher (2000) argue that marriage conveys beneﬁ ts to parents
and children alike, but they do not sufﬁ ciently distinguish between “better” and
“worse” marriages or consider how the end of a “bad” marriage creates the chance for
ex-partners to enter a better one. Since the overwhelming majority of Americans still
choose to marry, and most remarry if the ﬁ rst proves unworkable, it is more telling
to compare marriages over the life course of individuals than to make static compari-
sons between the currently married and the currently single, who are likely to marry
or remarry in the future.
12. The debate about whether children need a marriage or a village has a long
history, but it gathered steam when Hillary Clinton’s It Takes a Village inspired neo-
conservative critics to counter that only a marriage can raise a child. See, for example,
Zinsmeister (1996).

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n o t e s t o pa g e s 6 5 – 6 7

13. Stack (1974) remains the classic study of how social networks constitute bonds
of reciprocity and help poor and working-class families cope with economic and
other uncertainties. See, also, Edin and Lein (1997).
14.  Since single parents are overwhelmingly women, and women are more likely to
experience a downward economic slide in the wake of divorce, the children of divorce
remain economically vulnerable. Debate continues, however, over how much ﬁ nancial
fallout divorced women suffer. Weitzman (1985) provided an early and inﬂ uential argu-
ment about such drastic economic declines, but subsequent research and reanalysis has
shown how her analysis exaggerated divorce’s costs to women. Peterson (1989, 1996)
demonstrated that the short-term costs are far less than Weitzman claimed and these
costs diminish over time as women get back on their ﬁ nancial feet. A recent study by
Elizabeth Ananat and Guy Michaels found that “the average mom who divorces ends up
with just as much income as an otherwise similar mom who stays married. . . . [because]
divorced moms are . . . resilient. They move in with relatives, switch from part-time to
full-time  work  and . . . 70 percent remarry” (Ananat, 2008).
15.  U.S. Census Bureau (2005).
16.  Sarkisian and Gerstel (2004, 2008) have shed some light on the class and race
differences in helping networks. They found African-American women (and men)
are more likely to live with or near relatives than are whites, and African-American
women are more involved in helping with housework, rides, and child care, while
white women are more likely to give money and emotional support. Yet they also
report that African-Americans and whites of the same social class have about the
same level of involvement with relatives.
17. Analysts across the political spectrum have pointed to the moral ambiguities
of paid care work. In a critique of career-oriented, professional women, Flanagan
(2006) has argued that middle-class employed mothers use working-class women to
advance their own work ambitions. On the left, Ehrenreich and Hochschild (2002)
have expressed similar concerns about native-born Americans relying on immigrant
women. The heart of this conundrum, as Folbre (2001, 2008) documents, rests with
the fact that care work is routinely undervalued, whether or not it is paid, and it is
overwhelmingly performed by women. Hondagneu-Sotelo (2001) points out that since
care work is essential and paid care work is here to stay, those who perform this work
for pay should be accorded the respect, pay scale, and protections given to other paid
workers. But chastising women for seeking help with caretaking is not the answer.
18.  A recent Census Bureau study found that 89 percent of preschoolers and 63 per-
cent of school-age children with an employed mother are in some form of regular
child care arrangement, and nearly half of American preschoolers receive some kind
of child care from a relative. Among children younger than ﬁ ve with an employed
mother,  30 percent received regular care from a grandparent, 25 percent received
care from their fathers, and around a third spent time in an organized program such
as a day care center, nursery, or preschool (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005).
19.  Ethnographic studies by Hansen (2005) and Lareau (2003) suggest that unpaid
networks of care are more prevalent in working-class communities, while middle-
class parents are more likely to rely on paid help. Other studies show that a range
of class and ethnic groups rely on help from outside the immediate family. Edin
and Kefalas (2005) and Hertz (2006) present rich descriptions of how both poor

n o t e s t o pa g e s 7 6 – 1 0 3

245

and middle-class single mothers create ﬁ ctive families to help rear their children. In
general, nontraditional families of all class and ethnic stripes are turning to both paid
and unpaid help to build a diverse array of care networks.

Chapter Four

  1.  While two-ﬁ fths of children with an eroding family path reported a divorce,
three-ﬁ fths had parents who stayed together. Similarly, about a third had a work-
committed mother, but two-thirds had a mother who either never held a paid job or
relinquished a career.
  2. For incisive accounts of the social pressures leading some mothers to leave
hard-won careers, see Stone (2007) and Joan Williams (2000).
  3. Hacker (2003) examines how and why women’s rising status—and by implica-
tion the erosion of some of the privileges men once took for granted—have created
tensions in intimate (heterosexual) relationships.

4. Musick, Meier, and Bumpass (2007) report few protections for children when

ﬁ ghting parents remain married, since exposure to marital conﬂ ict in biological two-
parent families affects children’s risk taking whether or not their parents stay together.
  5. Marital separation and single parenthood typically lower children’s ﬁ nancial
resources, although the degree of decline, especially in the long run, remains open to
debate. Peterson (1996) has shown the actual decline is not nearly as large as Lenore
Weitzman’s much-cited book The Divorce Revolution (1985) claims. In his own study
and in a reanalysis of Weitzman’s data, Peterson (1989, 1996) shows that divorce’s
negative economic consequences decline over time as most women recover and adjust
to their new circumstances. Numerous studies also point out that many of the harm-
ful consequences of single parenthood drop substantially and sometimes disappear
when analysts control for a family’s ﬁ nancial resources. Put differently, the worst
consequences of divorce and single parenthood can be traced to the lack of economic
stability that often accompanies these circumstances. (See, for example, McClanahan
and Sandefur, 1994.)
  6. To put single mothers’ economic vulnerability in perspective, in 1997 only
53 percent of non-Hispanic white mothers, 44 percent of Hispanic mothers, and
33 percent of Black mothers received full payment of legally awarded child support
payments, while 23 percent of white mothers, 33 percent of Hispanic mothers, and
49 percent of Black mothers either received no payment or were not awarded child
support (Moore et al., 2002).
  7. A number of studies have documented the way humans seek useful lessons
out of the raw materials of their experiences. See, for example, Carey (2007) and
McAdams (2006). Appendix 2 discusses the meaning and signiﬁ cance of retrospec-
tive accounts as a method for understanding how people construct personal narra-
tives to ﬁ nd meaning in their lives.

Chapter Five

1. Some of the most visible liberal proponents of this view include Bellah et al.
(1985), Etzioni (1998), and Putnam (2000). Providing a more complicated picture,
Cancian (1987) argues that a new paradigm of “interdependence,” which balances

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commitment with concern for nourishing each partner’s separate identity, has
emerged alongside the paradigm of independence. Amato et al. (2007) propose that
rising individualism and increasing pressures for equality have produced trade-offs
in modern marriages.
2. See Gauthier and Furstenberg (2005), Danziger and Rouse (2007), and
Furstenberg et al. (2005). Cherlin (1992) refers to the shift toward voluntary mar-
riage as the “deinstitutionalization of marriage.” For overviews of the causes, con-
tours, and consequences of marital postponement, cohabitation, and other such
changes, see Smock (2000) and Elwert (2008).

3. See Stone (2007) and Joan Williams (2007). Bennetts (2007) and Hirshman

(2006) point to the dangers of leaving work and heading home. My ﬁ ndings suggest
young women are well aware of these dangers. While a recent survey (Pew Research
Center, 2007c) reports that most women prefer part-time work, this ﬁ nding is more
complicated than it appears. Many women, especially in highly demanding profes-
sions, deﬁ ne “part-time” as thirty-ﬁ ve to forty hours a week, and many men also say
they prefer a similar work schedule. Jerry Jacobs and I (2004) ﬁ nd that most women
and men generally prefer a workweek of about thirty-ﬁ ve to forty hours, but far fewer
can achieve this ideal. Instead, they are increasingly divided between those who are
putting in very long days and those who are not working as much as they would like.
4. Beck-Gersheim (2002, p. 42). More speciﬁ cally, a “major part of any such
strategy is thought about the future, a kind of early warning system that can enable
risks to be dealt with and rendered harmless. Not by chance has ‘prevention,’ under-
stood as a combination of foresight and forearming, become such a fashionable key-
word in the individualized society. Calculation and control: this planning dimension
is forcing individuals into the future as they go about their everyday lives.”

5. A long theoretical tradition considers how individuals develop strategies to

cope with the conﬂ ict between their “values” and their “practices.” In The Second Shift
(1989), Arlie Hochschild uses the term “gender strategies” to capture the internalized
ideological and psychological “deep structures” that shape couples’ domestic practices.
Many cultural analysts point to a distinction between “values” and “strategies.” Swidler
(1986) argues that culture is not simply a set of values and beliefs, but more funda-
mentally consists of a “tool kit” of behaviors and practices. Pierre Bourdieu stresses
the importance of “habitus,” which encompasses the full set of interrelated forces that
comprise a person’s social world (1977, 1984). In Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood
(1984), Kristen Luker uses the term “world view” to describe how abortion activists on
both sides of the debate develop different perspectives on women’s interests. Lamont
(1992) and Zerubavel (1991) examine the “symbolic boundaries” that create cultural
divisions and inequalities between social groups. Although my approach ﬁ ts with this
tradition, I stress how cultural and structural contradictions create dilemmas that force
new generations to innovate (see, for example, Gerson, 2002).
6. Like Max Weber’s notion of an ideal type, these categories reﬂ ect “aspiration
packages” that may not exist in a pure form. Such categories nevertheless shape the
way people think about their lives, and they also inform public debate about people’s
choices.
7. Marc and Amy Vachon (2010) deﬁ ne “equally shared parenting” as the inten-
tional sharing of child rearing, breadwinning, housework, and time for self. They

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247

add that equal parenting need not involve a constant focus on score keeping and that
it is not just a way for men to do more or for couples to pursue an abstract principle.
In addition to representing the pursuit of equality, egalitarian sharing can have ben-
eﬁ ts for everyone. Deutsch (1999) and Meers and Strober (2009) also discuss ways of
deﬁ ning and achieving equal sharing.
8. Pew Research Center (2007b).

9. Since same-sex marriage is not (yet) a widely available option, gays and lesbi-

ans are the most likely to make the distinction between being legally married and
married “in spirit” (as several of my interviewees put it). Recent studies of same-sex
couples who enter civil unions show “surprisingly few differences between committed
gay couples and committed straight couples” (Parker-Pope, 2008). A Vermont sur-
vey comparing same-sex civil unions with heterosexual married couples did ﬁ nd that
same-sex relationships, whether between men or women, are somewhat likely to be
more egalitarian than heterosexual ones in terms of sharing housework, initiating sex,
and having conversations about the relationship. These more equal relationships are
also linked with higher satisfaction. The ﬁ ndings that a couple’s gender composition
makes little difference provides further evidence that inequality in heterosexual rela-
tionships is shaped by socially and culturally malleable (rather than inherent) forces.
Blumstein and Schwartz (1983) reported similar ﬁ ndings several decades ago.
10.  Children choose both positive and negative “role models” from a much wider
array than classic socialization theory allows, including a range of people in their
social world (Gerson, 1985, 1995).
11.  Although younger generations are postponing marriage, rumors of its death,
to paraphrase Mark Twain, have been greatly exaggerated. The vast majority of
Americans do eventually marry (and if they divorce, most also remarry). In 2005,
the majority of men and women (72 percent) had been married by the time they
were thirty to thirty-four years old, and 96 percent of Americans over sixty-ﬁ ve had
been married (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005). Of course, it remains to be seen if younger
generations will ultimately marry at such high rates. Even if they do not attain such
high rates of marriage (as seems likely), those who do marry may be more likely to
stay married since people who marry after twenty-ﬁ ve are less likely to divorce than
those who marry at an earlier age. For careful considerations of the dyamics of marital
commitment among contemporary adults, see Byrd (2009) and Cherlin (2009).
12.  American Business Collaboration (2004). This survey conducted by the Fami-
lies and Work Institute for a consortium of American businesses reports that 80 per-
cent of employed, college-educated Gen-Y’ers say they would like to work fewer paid
and unpaid hours. Also see Greenberg (2005) and Pew Research Center (2007b).
13. Pew Research Center (2007b). Only faithfulness (93 percent) and having a
“happy” sexual relationship (70 percent) ranked higher. For similar ﬁ ndings on the
rise of egalitarian ideals, see Musick, Meier, and Bumpass (2007).
14. Teixeira (2009). These ﬁ ndings are from the 2008 National Election study,
which asked people to place themselves on a seven-point scale relative to the state-
ment, “Some people feel that women should have an equal role with men in running
business, industry, and government. Others feel that women’s place is in the home.”
15. Hertz (1986).
16.  Furstenberg et al. (2004).

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n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 1 6 – 1 2 0

17.  Jerry Jacobs and I (2004) ﬁ nd a similar “aspiration gap” between women’s and
men’s actual and ideal working times.
18. Merton  (1949) formulated the classic framework for understanding how
“opportunity structures” can allow, thwart, or redirect individual aspirations. (Also
see Stinchcombe, 1975.)
19. Measurement differences have led to some disagreement about current rates
of divorce and cohabitation. Some argue that about 50 percent of marriages end
in divorce, while others see the rate as closer to 40 percent. Another recent study
found that in 2005, unmarried cohabitants comprised 7.6 percent of all couples,
compared to 5.1 in 1995 (Popenoe, 2008). In addition, a Census Bureau report shows
that “more than half the Americans who might have celebrated their 25th wed-
ding anniversaries since 2000 were divorced, separated or widowed before reaching
that milestone” (Roberts, 2007b). For overviews of trends in marriage, divorce, and
cohabitation, see Cherlin (2005, 2009), Elwert (2008), and Smock (2000).
20. Greenberg, 2005.
21.  Pew Research Center (2007b).
22. Coontz (2005).
23.  Wilcox and Nock (2006, 2007) argue that women are happier in traditional
marriages, but their evidence actually tells a different story. They ﬁ nd, for example,
that wives who work full-time and earn more than their husbands can be unhappy
in their marriage if they perceive an unfair division of household labor and feel their
husbands are not offering sufﬁ cient emotional support. When it comes to women’s
marital happiness, men’s practical and emotional support matters most. See Springer
(2007) for an alternative to the Wilcox and Nock perspective.
24.  The Census Bureau reports that the rise in never-married twentysomethings
can be found among both college-educated and high school–educated youth ( Jayson
and DeBarros, 2007). From 1950 to 2004, the median age of ﬁ rst marriage rose
from twenty to twenty-six (Danziger and Rouse, 2007). For women, the median age
in 2005 was almost twenty-six, compared to twenty in 1960, and for men, it was
over twenty-seven, compared to about twenty-three in 1960. Moreover, in 2006,
29 per cent of women and 33 per cent of men in their early thirties had never been
married.
25.  Coser and Coser (1974); Moen (2003).
26. Schor (1991) provided an early look at how rising time pressures have affected
American workers, while Hochschild (1997) explored the pushes and pulls inside a
company with fairly generous family support policies. Jerry Jacobs and I (2004) chart
the differences between workers in professional and working-class jobs, showing how
working time has become a new form of social inequality.
27.  One survey found that 73 percent of young people between the ages of twenty-
one and twenty-eight who are either in college or holding a part-time or full-time
job worry about balancing work and personal obligations (Blandford-Beringsmith
and Musbach, 2009).
28.  Among the many studies of the effects of these changes on contemporary work-
ers, see Newman (1992), Ehrenreich (2001), and Moen and Roehling (2005).
29. Lareau (2003) argues that “concerted cultivation” (which involves devoted
parenting) is a middle-class development, but Hays (1996, 2003) shows that these

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249

standards, at least as a set of values, can be found in all classes. Warner (2005) pres-
ents a popular account of the rising pressures on American parents, especially in
contrast to their European counterparts.
30. In his classic article “The Oversocialized Conception of Man in Modern Sociology,”
Wrong (1961) points out that internalized norms do not guarantee that a person will
conform, only that they will feel guilty when they rebel. My study of women’s work and
mothering decisions (1985) shows this is so for women as well. To extend this argument,
transgressing social norms is especially likely when social and cultural cross-pressures
force individuals to choose among equally desirable or equally undesirable options.
31. Carol Stack’s (1974) classic study of kinship networks in a poor African-
American community uses the concept of “survival strategies.”

Chapter Six

  1. These percentages describe the contours of the sample. Although they do
not necessarily indicate the percentage breakdowns that might be found in a larger
national sample, they reﬂ ect national demographic and social trends. Moreover, most
nationally representative surveys report similar ﬁ ndings. Appendix 2 discusses my
methods and analytic approach in depth.
  2.  Joshua Coleman (2005) outlines men’s strategies for avoiding their fair share at
home, even when their wives work as much as they do.
  3.  Put differently, these women are determined to avoid what Bennetts (2007)
calls “the feminine mistake.”
  4. While most of these experiences involved heterosexual relationships, those
women who self-identiﬁ ed as lesbians also stressed the importance of self-reliance,
whether or not they were in a long-term relationship.
  5.  For rich descriptions of why single mothers stress mothering more than mar-
riage, see Edin and Kefalas (2006) and Anderson (1990, 1999).
  6. In the language proposed by Giddens (1979), women’s new contingencies
prompt them to move beyond “practical consciousness” to “discursive conscious-
ness.” Behavior becomes “action” when it requires effort and thought and contrib-
utes to social change. Sidel (2006) reports similar strategies among young women
from all classes and races.
  7.  Galinsky et al. (2009) report that 67 percent of men and 66 percent of women
under twenty-nine say they want to move up at the workplace.
  8. Damaske (2009) ﬁ nds that both employed and nonworking women use a simi-
lar discourse of “family need” to account for their disparate decisions. Women who
fall back on self-reliance also argue that their own need to work is compatible with
their children’s need for both nurturance and economic support.
  9.  See Smock (2000) and Shapira (2008).
10.  Following Cancian’s (1987) distinction between “independence,” which stresses
the development of a separate self, and “interdependence,” which involves developing
the self in the context of a committed relationship, self-reliant women see indepen-
dence as a precondition for creating an interdependent relationship.
11.  See, for example, Coontz (2008) and Gregory (2007). Mounting evidence also
shows that higher earnings help women gain more autonomy in their relationships.

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n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 4 1 – 1 4 4

Gupta (2006) reports, for example, that for every $7,500 in additional income, a
wife’s share of housework declines by one hour per week. Contrary to arguments that
economically successful women threaten their spouses so much that wives take on
more housework to build up a husband’s ego, a woman’s share of housework actually
depends more on how much she earns and is not related to whether it is more or less
than her partner’s.
12. Stevenson and Wolfers (2006) have shown that the increased availability of
divorce has indeed given women more power. By giving married women an exit
option, it has provided stronger incentives for husbands to respect their wishes.
13. Greenberg (2005). This study also reports that 49 percent of women believe
that most of the men they know are not responsible enough to get married, compared
to 38 percent of men who hold the same view of women they know.
14.  Not only are single women among the fastest-growing demographic groups,
but a spate of recent studies show that most single women do ﬁ ne, are satisﬁ ed
with their lives, and are happy at middle age. See, especially, De Paulo (2006) and
Trimberger (2005). Roberts (2007a) offers a journalistic overview of the increase in
women who live on their own.
15. Glass (2009). It is instructive to note that while only 10 percent of teens and
young women say they want to remain childless, 20 percent of women between
the ages of forty and forty-ﬁ ve in 2006 had not borne children. With the birthrate
for native-born women hovering around 1.8 children per woman, many are either
remaining childless or having only one child. Women’s fertility plans and behavior
change substantially as they age and many encounter unforeseen obstacles to child-
bearing as well as unforeseen attractions to having fewer or no children.
16.  In their study of poor single mothers, Edin and Kefalas (2005) report a similar
ﬁ nding. In a three-decade study of more than 300 teen mothers from Baltimore,
Furstenberg (2007) ﬁ nds they did better than most would have predicted and did
not fare substantially worse than their peers who postponed childbearing. More than
75 percent ﬁ nished high school or obtained a GED and 10 percent earned a college
degree, outcomes very similar to the equally poor women who did not become teen
mothers.
17. Nadis (2006).
18. Shapira (2008). These ﬁ gures are based on survey data from the National Opin-
ion Research Center on metropolitan areas nationwide, including cities and suburbs.
The U.S. Census Bureau also reports that a growing percentage of women are either
remaining childless or postponing parenthood well into their forties. Today, about
20 percent of women ages forty to forty-four have no children, double the level of
three decades ago, and women in this age group who have children have an average
of 1.9, compared with 3.1 in 1976 (Zezima, 2008). While it is too soon to know
what younger generations will do, there are strong indications they will continue
this trend.
19.  The Northwestern University Center for Labor Market Studies (2006) reports
that this holds for one-third of births to non-Hispanic white women, 51 percent of
births to Latina women, and almost 80 percent of births to black women. A poll con-
ducted by Amick and Hertz (2007) shows that a high proportion of Wellesley under-
graduates are prepared to bear a child on their own. At the other end of the economic

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 4 4 – 1 5 2

251

spectrum, the Fragile Families Study, a large national study of poor individuals,
found that 40 percent of births were to unmarried women, although about half were
in a committed relationship (England and Edin, 2007). The U.S. Census Bureau
(2006a) reports that 32 percent of births in the year ending in June 2004 were to
unmarried women. According to the Center for Disease Control National Center
for Health Statistics, 45 percent of all pregnancies in 2004 were among unmarried
women, but just 12 percent were to teenagers, compared to 15 percent in 1990, and
less than 38 percent were to women under the age of twenty-ﬁ ve, down from nearly
43 percent in 1990 (Fox, 2008).
20. Bazelon (2009).
21.  See Goode (1963). Despite Goode’s focus on the husband-wife unit, his argu-
ment left room for the growth of more diverse family forms. Historical developments
such as the need for women to work, the acceptance of sex outside marriage, and the
rise of divorce have set the stage for “nonconjugal” families and for conﬂ icts between
men’s and women’s mobility. Hertz (2006) explores the ramiﬁ cations of this develop-
ment for middle-class women who choose to become mothers without a partner. In a
more popular vein, Dowd (2005) raises the same question.
22.  Updating Carol Stack’s 1974 study of poor women’s care networks, a range of
recent research shows how contemporary single women of all classes and races rely on
extended networks, from Rosanna Hertz’s depiction of middle-class single mothers
(2006) to Patricia Hill Collins’s analysis of Black women’s reliance on “other mothers”
(1991) to E. Kay Trimberger’s study of middle-aged single women who build friend-
ship networks “in health and sickness, until death did them part” (2005). Gerstel and
Sarkisian (2006) report that, contrary to popular belief, singles (especially the never
married) are more likely than married couples to socialize with, encourage, and help
their friends and neighbors. Hansen (2005) also shows how all parents, including
fathers, rely on a much wider network of social and family ties than the image of the
“isolated nuclear family” conveys. (Also see Dill, 1994, and Weston, 1991.)
23.  For an early analysis of rising time demands, especially in professional and mana-
gerial jobs, see Schor (1991). For an alternative perspective, see Robinson and Godbey
(1997). In their survey of young workers under twenty-nine, Galinsky et al. (2009)
report that a third of these employed women are wary of more responsibility at work,
citing concerns about job pressures and a lack of ﬂ exibility to manage a personal life.
24.  Bianchi, Robinson, and Milkie (2006).
25.  Joan Williams (2000) charts how the “ideal worker” ethos discriminates against
women and reinforces gender inequality. Blair-Loy (2003) analyzes the “competing
devotions” pulling professional women in two directions at once. While Stone (2007)
shows how inﬂ exible workplaces and high family demands are the major forces push-
ing some middle-class professional women out of careers, this analysis also applies to
women with less glamorous job options.
26.  Although the gender gap in housework and child care has declined in recent
decades, it has not disappeared. Bianchi, Robinson, and Milkie (2006) report a gen-
der convergence since the 1960s, but argue that this has slowed in the last decade.
Citing national studies, Belkin (2008) reports that “across classes, when wives stay
home and husbands are the sole earners, women perform about two-thirds of the
housework and even more of the childcare … In addition, 58 percent of women say

252

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 5 4 – 1 5 9

the division of labor in modern families is not fair to them, while 11 percent of men
make a similar claim.”
27.  This process resembles the “emotion work” Hochshild (1979) describes, when
people endeavor to shape their feelings to better ﬁ t the expectations and demands of
their social context.
28. This outlook appears to support the human capital argument preferred by
many economists (for example, Becker, 1981). Yet informants who expressed this
view are reacting to their situational constraints and limited opportunities. Not only
is this a minority outlook, but it does not represent their ideal preferences.
29. Life course analysts point out that, given small family sizes and longer life
spans, women are spending a smaller proportion of their lives rearing young children
even if they stay home during these years. The much reported rise in the percentage
of stay-at-home mothers is misleading, since this statistic typically refers to mothers
with children under the age of one. Among mothers with children one or older, the
labor force participation rate remains comparable to other women in the same age
group at around 70 percent.
30. Garey (1999) offers a perceptive study of how working-class women accom-
plish this balancing act on a daily basis. Garey argues that these women “weave”
work and motherhood in a variety of ways, although she does not focus on the dis-
tinction between working at a job and building a career, a feat much harder to inte-
grate with parenting.
31. In Backlash (1991), Susan Faludi argues that the rise of mothering standards is
part of a backlash against women’s ﬁ ght for equal rights.
32.  Despite the popular assertions heralded by some journalists and public intel-
lectuals—for example, Danielle Crittenden (1999) and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
(1996)—that young women prefer domesticity, the preponderance of evidence sug-
gests no such widespread wish to return to traditionalism. While women’s work
participation may be plateauing rather than continuing to rise, this appears to reﬂ ect
constricted child care options and work opportunities (Boushey, 2008; Porter, 2006;
Uchitelle, 2008; Cotter, Hermsen, and Vanneman, 2004). In the period from 2000
to 2008, the percentage of women with jobs remained relatively stable (dropping
about 2 percent) compared to the percentage of men, which dropped more than
5 percent (New York Times, 2008).
33.  Sharon Hays extends her study of the cultural contradictions of motherhood
among middle-class and working-class women (1996) with a study of how these
cultural and social contradictions also pose dilemmas for poor women and welfare
workers (2003).
34.  Rose and Hartmann (2008) and Ann Crittenden (2001).

Chapter Seven

1. For an early statement on why men resist equality, even when it may be in their
longer-term interest to support it, see William Goode (1982). In contrast, Robert
Jackson (1998) argues that over the long run, most men ultimately support gender
equality as part of a larger package of egalitarian movements that are integral to
modern social organization.

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  2.  In a brilliant analysis of the tensions of manhood in American culture, Fiedler
(1966) charts how great American novels, from Moby Dick to Huckleberry Finn,
involve a male protagonist who forsakes domestic life and heterosexual commitment
to ﬁ nd his identity as a man alone. For powerful statements about the dual strains of
individualism and commitment in modern American culture, see Swidler (1980) and
Bellah et al. (1985).
  3.  Galinsky et al. (2009).
  4.  This outlook preserves the essential elements of twentieth-century “hegemonic
masculinity” (to use a term coined by R.W. Connell, 1987, 1995), including the
assumption of heterosexuality. It is thus not surprising that none of the “neotradi-
tional” men identiﬁ ed as gay.
  5. Among the many studies documenting continuing racial disadvantage, see
Pager (2007), Manza and Uggen (2006), Massey (2007), and Western (2006).
  6.  The term “marriageable men,” as used by William Julius Wilson (1987), refers
to men who earn enough to be a suitable mate. In Wilson’s analysis, a dwindling
pool of jobs has drastically constricted the pool of acceptable husbands in poor com-
munities. More generally, however, few have questioned the assumption that income
should be the primary yardstick for measuring a man’s suitability as a husband. As
we have seen, women increasingly expect their partner to be a sharing caretaker, but
they also want him to be a responsible earner.
  7.  Annette Lareau uses the concept of “invisible inequality” to distinguish between
middle-class and working-class childhoods. Christine Williams (1989, 1995) docu-
ments how a “glass escalator” helps men rise in female-dominated ﬁ elds even though
women continue to hit glass ceilings in male-dominated ones. For incisive analyses of
continuing discrimination against women at the workplace, see Correll et al. (2007),
Correll (2004), Ridgeway and Correll (2004), and Valian (1998).
  8.  Women now make up 58 percent of those enrolled in two- and four-year col-
leges and are also the majority in graduate schools and professional schools, although
many of these women concentrate in historically female ﬁ elds that remain underpaid
compared to male-dominated ones ( Jacobs, 2003). The 2005 National Survey of
Student Engagement, which studied 90,000 students at 530 institutions, found that
college men are signiﬁ cantly more likely than women to say they skipped classes, did
not complete their homework, and did not turn it in on time (Lewin, 2006).
  9.  Cotter, Hermsen, and Vanneman (2004).
10.  Joan Williams (2000).
11.  Epstein et al. (1999) show that forty-hour workweeks are now considered part-
time in most law ﬁ rms. Louise Roth’s study of Wall Street ﬁ nancial ﬁ rms (2006)
found them more likely to support equal opportunity policies, which give women
an equal right to work interminable hours, than to support family-friendly policies,
which undermine the principle that work should supersede family needs.
12.  See, for example, Frank and Cook (1996). The economic crisis has intensiﬁ ed
this concern.
13.  The varied outcomes among siblings who grew up in the same household point
to the indeterminate nature of family experiences as well as to the diverse inﬂ uences a
father’s model can have on sons. Dalton Conley (2004) shows how “within family” dif-
ferences in adults’ income attainment are greater than “between family” differences.

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n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 7 0 – 1 7 5

Although he focuses on how parents apportion unequal investments among siblings,
I would add that siblings also develop different reactions to similar circumstances and
are likely to encounter different opportunities and obstacles in the wider world.
14.  Koropeckyj-Cox and Pendell (2007).
15. Glauber (2008), Correll et al. (2007), and Correll (2004).
16.  The “case for marriage” (as Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher put it) appears
compelling for men, but much less so for women, who are more likely to pay a price,
literally and ﬁ guratively, for being a wife and mother. In Correll’s experimental
research, she also ﬁ nds that mothers are signiﬁ cantly less likely to be hired and are
offered lower salaries than equally qualiﬁ ed childless women. Mothers are rated as
less competent, less committed, and less suitable for promotion and training, and
they are also held to higher performance standards, while fathers are not rated lower
than other men and beneﬁ ted on some measures. Budig and England (2001) add that
mothers suffer a substantial per-child wage penalty not explained by other factors,
such as amount of schooling or work experience. In sum, men enjoy a marriage and
fatherhood advantage, while women experience a marriage and motherhood penalty.
17. Institute for Women’s Policy Research, 2008. Drago, Black, and Wooden
(2005) report that approximately 20 percent of couples contain a wife whose earn-
ings exceed her husband’s by more than 10 percent, but only about a quarter of these
couples remain in this state in the following year. Winslow-Bowe (2006) reports
that “although a signiﬁ cant minority of women out earn their husbands in one year,
considerably fewer do so for ﬁ ve consecutive years.” In sum, although the gender
wage gap has declined, a husband’s earnings continue to outstrip a wife’s in most
marriages, especially in the longer run. (Also see Charles and Grusky, 2004; Cotter,
Hermsen, and Vanneman, 2004; and Blau, Brinton, and Grusky, 2006.)
18.  The percentage of couples relying on a wife as the primary provider (deﬁ ned
as earning 60 percent or more of total couple earnings) remains low, although it
increased from 4 percent in 1970 to 12 percent in 2001 (Raley, Mattingly, and
Bianchi, 2006).
19.  Even though “gender” is an ambiguous category in same-sex partnerships, they
face similar work and child-rearing constraints. Same-sex couples tend to create more
egalitarian arrangements, but they also tend to devise ways to divide responsibility
for caretaking, as Carrington (1999) shows. In her study of African-American lesbian
couples, Mignon Moore (2008) ﬁ nds that biological motherhood shapes parenting
strategies and that these couples are more concerned with economic independence
than with having an equal distribution of domestic work.
20. Women’s earnings are the major reason that contemporary households have
maintained a standard of living on a par with the households of several decades ago.
Warren and Tyagi (2003) focus on the drawbacks of this trend, while Barnett and
Rivers (1996) delineate the advantages of two-income families. Bradbury and Katz
(2004) report that in recent decades, families that have moved ahead or maintained
their position have had wives with high and rising employment rates, work hours,
and pay. In fact, the annual earnings of wives in upwardly mobile families have
increased relative to the earnings of their husbands.
21.  See, for example, Hartmann (1976). Potuchek (1997) analyzes how dual-earner
couples still tend to designate one partner—usually but not always the husband—as

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the main breadwinner and how this designation is crucial to shaping the domestic
dynamics of contemporary couples.
22.  For studies that distinguish among fathers who are helpers, equal partners, and
primary caretakers, see Risman (1986, 1998) and my own study of men’s parenting
and work commitments (1993). Recent decades have seen a notable rise in men’s
participation in domestic work, but stay-at-home fathers remain a very small group
(Smith, 2009).
23.  The history of modern family life has been one of continual “outsourcing.” This
process of “structural differentiation” (a term used by Parsons and Bales, 1955) ﬁ rst
involved moving such tasks as raising food, weaving cloth, sewing clothes, and educat-
ing the young out of the home. The growing reliance on day care, takeout, and prepared
food is a postindustrial extension of this process. If “commodiﬁ cation” has dangers, espe-
cially in reinforcing class inequality, it is also a logical and practical response to women’s
entry into the world of paid work in the absence of a comparable increase in men’s
domestic involvement. Rather than lamenting the inevitable rise in families’ reliance on
other caretakers, the larger challenge is to make this shift more equal and fair by increas-
ing the economic and social value of both paid and unpaid care work. See, for example,
Hondagneu-Sotelo (2001), Folbre (2001), and Zimmerman, Litt, and Bose (2006).
24.  Linda Hirshman (2006) argues that “choice feminism” leaves women short of
equality because it does not effectively address the domestic glass ceiling.
25.  For an overview of how the rise of the market transformed cultural deﬁ nitions
of manhood, see Kimmel (1996). Lamont (2000) richly details the place of work in
the lives of contemporary working-class men. See also Sennett and Cobb (1972) and
Bourdieu (1984) on the importance of class as a cultural marker, a habitus, as well as
an economic status.
26.  For compelling analyses of how providing essential, but unpaid or poorly paid,
care exacts costs from society as well as from individual care workers and providers,
see Folbre (2008) and Ann Crittenden (2001).
27.  For an original analysis of how social and cultural arrangements shape market
worth, see Zelizer (1994, 2005).
28. Mooney (2008) discusses how economic transformations have undermined
young middle-class Americans’ ability to achieve their parents’ standard of living.
29. See Porter and O’Donnell (2006). Uchitelle (2006) and Greenhouse (2008)
document the decline of economic options and the rise of economically squeezed
workers, especially at the bottom of the income ladder.
30. Lewin (2008).
31. Jones (2006), USA Today (2007).
32. Despite the rise of alternatives to marriage, extended bachelorhood contin-
ues to have an aura of immaturity. Many neoconservative analysts argue that mar-
riage exerts a “civilizing” inﬂ uence on men. In this view, unmarried men are prone
to behave badly, while marriage—and by implication, the inﬂ uence of women—
reins in their sexual and violent impulses. See, for example, Nock (1998) and James
Q. Wilson (2002). The evidence on the high rates of marital inﬁ delity among both
husbands and wives undermines this argument.
33. Popenoe (1988, 1996) argues that declining marriage rates indicate a decline
of the family.

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34. Given the rising rates of children born to single mothers, it is difﬁ cult to
ascertain the full contours of unmarried paternity. Not only are some men unwill-
ing to acknowledge it, but others may not be aware that they have fathered children
(England and Edin, 2007).
35. Haney (2002) provides an insightful analysis of the culturally variable mean-
ings of “dependency” for women. See also Fraser (1989) and Orloff (2008).
36. Kimmel (2008) and Risman and Seale (2010) analyze the cultural strictures
that continue to constrain deﬁ nitions of masculinity even as women’s cultural options
expand.
37. Ehrenreich (1983) argues that women’s ﬁ ght for equality also allowed men to
ﬂ ee commitment by making it acceptable for them to remain unmarried. Yet research
shows that, in the long run, men who are unconnected to families are more likely
to suffer adverse consequences, particularly because they are less likely than women
to draw on a wider network of family and friends. McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and
Brashears (2006) ﬁ nd that men are especially likely to lack close social ties other than a
marital partner. For the classic study of “his and her” marriages, see Bernard (1982).

Chapter Eight

  1. Another 15 percent of women and 20 percent of men agree there is no big dif-
ference or a mixed difference, and only 2 percent of women and 4 percent of men feel
women have it worse today.
  2. Only 26 percent of men and 7 percent of women believe men have it worse
today than in the past, despite contemporary obstacles.
  3.  John Gray’s best seller, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus (1992), offers
a popular treatment of gender difference. Using theories that range from classical to
feminist to popular, a wide range of writers have posited distinctly different “mas-
culine” and “feminine” personalities. Parsons and Bales (1955) laid out the classic
framework, which relied on structural-functional theory to analyze the ascendance
of homemaker-breadwinner households in the mid-twentieth century. Particularly
inﬂ uential feminist approaches include Nancy Chodorow’s theory of the reproduc-
tion of mothering (1978), which offers an incisive critique of Parsons’ analysis but
nevertheless argues that women have more “permeable ego boundaries” than men
possess, and Carol Gilligan’s analysis of gender differences in moral reasoning (1982),
which argues that women are more inclined than men to stress connectedness rather
than abstract principles of justice. Epstein (1988) and Barnett and Rivers (2004)
critique this emphasis on gender differences in temperament and personality, outlin-
ing the ways social structures and cultural pressures lead to constructing gender as
a “dichotomous distinction” despite the substantial variation in personal attributes
within gender groups and the large overlap between them.

4. Blair-Loy (2003). The cultural stress on what Zelizer (1985) calls the “priceless-

ness” of children to their parents is offset by the lack of collective support. As a result,
children’s fates are privatized, leaving some with abundant resources and others with
little. Sadly, privatizing care devalues children in the name of family values.
5. In The Sociological Imagination, Mills (1959) makes the classic statement about
how public problems are experienced as intensely private troubles.

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257

  6.  Counter to popular concerns about the dangers of organized day care (see, for
example, Eberstadt, 2004), Wrigley and Dreby (2005) report that children are actu-
ally less likely to suffer physical harm in day care centers than when they receive
in-home care, which is less visible and more variable in quality. Of course, whatever
the setting, it is the quality of care that matters most (Rabin, 2008). Gornick and
Myers (2003) and Heymann and Beem (2005) document the enormous gap between
the child care supports in Europe and around the globe and those in the United
States. In a survey of 168 countries, Heymann and Beem report, for example, that the
United States is one of only ﬁ ve without mandatory paid maternity leave; the others
are Lesotho, Liberia, Papua New Guinea, and Swaziland.
  7.  Polls show young Americans are becoming more engaged in elective politics
and, in the words of some analysts, “leaning left” (Nagourney and Thee, 2007).
A 2008 survey found that 28 percent of young people between seventeen and twenty-
nine describe themselves as liberal (compared with 20 percent of the general popula-
tion) and 27 percent call themselves conservative (compared with 32 percent of the
general public). In 2008, 35 percent of eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds identiﬁ ed
as Democratic, 23 percent as Republican, and 32 percent as independent. A Pew
study on “Generation Next” reports similar results, with 48 percent of young adults
between eighteen and twenty-six identifying more with Democrats and 35 percent
leaning toward Republicans (Jayson, 2007). The young women and men in my study
hold similarly diverse political orientations and are only slightly less conservative as
a group than the general youth population, with 46 percent describing themselves as
independent, 39 percent leaning Democratic, and 15 percent leaning Republican.
  8. Maume (2006). In a survey of American workers conducted by the Families
and Work Institute, women and men of all ethnic groups express concern that asking
for family-support policies or using policies already in place will entail long-term
career costs (Jacobs and Gerson, 2004).
  9.  Drago et al. (2006) report, for example, that academic faculty attempt to hide
their caregiving activities to avoid bias and discrimination at work.
10.  Other rich societies, especially in Northern Europe, are more prone to create
universal systems that guarantee a baseline level of support for all citizens. See
Gornick and Myers (2003, 2009) and Wilensky (1974).
11.  As its title makes clear, Whyte’s The Organization Man (1956) presumed this
conformist worker was a man.
12.  Whether termed “the career mystique,” as Phyllis Moen and Patricia Roehling
propose, or “the ideal worker,” as Joan Williams argues, this ethos presumes that an
undiluted dedication to work will bestow upward mobility and economic security. It
leaves little room for the ebb and ﬂ ow of personal responsibilities outside the work-
place as they arise during the day or over the span of a working life.
13. Dwyer (2006) reports that “more workers are choosing a self-directed career,
leaving behind company politics and gaining ﬂ exibility.” The Bureau of Labor Statis-
tics found that independent contract workers made up 8 percent of the workforce in
2005, which is likely to be an underestimate due to the measuring procedure. For in-
depth considerations of the rise and appeal of self-employment, see Arum (2004).
14.  A number of studies have shown that wealth is a greater source of U.S. inequal-
ity than income. See Oliver and Shapiro (1995) and Conley (1999).

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n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 9 6 – 2 0 0

15. Friedson (1998) pointed out that autonomy in professional jobs, though sub-
stantial compared to other occupations, is nevertheless under assault in late modern
societies. Also see Abbott (1988).
16.  Pitt-Catsouphes et al. (2009) report that 80 percent of younger Gen X’ers (age
twenty-seven to thirty-ﬁ ve) and 71 percent of Gen Y’ers (twenty-six or younger)
believe that job ﬂ exibility contributes a great or a moderate amount to work suc-
cess. Even more telling, 92 percent of the Gen X’ers and 86 percent of the Gen Y’ers
believe ﬂ exibility at work contributes a great or a moderate amount to the overall
quality of life. Yet they also report that 65 percent of younger Gen X’ers and 59 per-
cent of Gen Y’ers believe that employers view workers who use ﬂ exible options as less
serious about their careers than those who do not.
17. Hochschild (1975). For an example of how young people are reconsidering
the contours of careers, see Kossek and Lautsch (2007), who describe three types of
“ﬂ exstyles,” including integrators, who blend work and family; separators, who keep
work and family separate; and volleyers, who are in between. Since no one best way
is right for everyone, they argue, people need to have enough options to choose what
works best for them. See also Benko and Weisberg (2007).
18. Gary Becker laid the framework for this view in his classic book A Treatise
on the Family  (1981), which applied the principles of human capital economics to
family decision making. The views of my respondents, however, belie the basic
argument that men are more inclined to specialize in market pursuits while women
prefer to trade earnings for a family-friendly job. “Tastes” do not necessarily drive
choices, since no one makes choices in a constraint-free context. Whether conscious
or unconscious, the act of choosing always involves deciding among alternatives that
are shaped by social contexts.
19.  In a related debate, some analysts, such as Schor (1996), stress the role of out-
sized consumption desires in fueling the trends toward long working hours, while
others (for example, Warren and Tyagi, 2003) argue that the rising costs of essential
goods, especially housing, are forcing Americans to work more than they would
prefer.
20. In a survey of young adults age eighteen to twenty-four, Greenberg (2005)
reports, for example, that among those seeking work, a large majority (60 percent) say
the most important factor is ﬁ nding a job they enjoy, while only 17 percent say it is
making a good amount of money, and an additional 11 percent place having an oppor-
tunity to advance at the top. Economic realities can nevertheless temper this outlook.
Among those who call themselves “mature adults,” a smaller proportion (48 percent)
place job enjoyment ﬁ rst, and a larger group (26 percent) stress the importance of
“making good money.” Groups with pronounced economic strains—married youth
and high school dropouts—are more likely to stress ﬁ nding a job with a good salary.
21.  A survey of 351 law students found that the vast majority of men and women
are willing to trade money for the time to achieve a better balance between family
and work (Rankin, Taubman, and Wu, 2008). A Families and Work Institute sur-
vey of American workers also found that most workers would be willing to sacriﬁ ce
some income for ﬂ exible scheduling, fewer working hours, and other family-friendly
options ( Jacobs and Gerson, 2004). Also see Galinsky, Kim, and Bond (2001) and
Galinsky et al. (2005).

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259

22. Hertz (1986). See also Moen and Chesley (2007).
23. Garey (1999) proposes the image of “weaving” to describe women’s efforts to
combine work and motherhood. Egalitarian sharing, however, means fathers and
mothers need to weave these activities as a couple.
24. These views undermine received patterns of “doing gender.” In addition to
examining how gender is reproduced, we also need to understand when, how, and
why some are motivated and able to “redo” or “undo” gender as an organizing prin-
ciple in relationships.
25. Rampell (2009). Although the recession has accelerated the growth in wom-
en’s share of all jobs, this process has been under way for decades as service sector
and white-collar occupations have gradually but inexorably supplanted manufactur-
ing and blue-collar occupations. Unfortunately, the jobs women hold are likely to
pay less and to offer fewer beneﬁ ts or long-term security. The gender wage gap has
declined from 60 cents on the dollar in 1980 to 78 cents on the dollar in 2008, but
it still persists and has cumulative effects that make a bigger difference in the long
run (Rose and Hartmann, 2008).
26.  Galinsky et al. (2009).
27.  Sullivan and Coltrane (2008). See also Bianchi, Robinson, and Milkie (2006),
Barnett and Rivers (2004), Coltrane (1996, 2004), Coltrane and Ishii-Koontz (1992),
and Sullivan (2006). Deutsch (1999) ﬁ nds a close relationship between being an
equal couple and having friends who are also egalitarian.
28.  Indeed, men’s stagnant earnings account for much of the decline in the gen-
der pay gap (Bernhardt, Morris, and Handcock, 1995; Coy, 2008; Hennessy-Fiske,
2006). Unions now account for only 8 percent of jobs in the private sector and
37 percent in the public sector.
29. In 2007, about 33 percent of young women twenty-ﬁ ve to twenty-nine held
a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 26 percent of their male counterparts
(U.S. Census Bureau, 2008).
30.  This is especially so for men who lack college degrees, whose relative earnings
have declined over the last three decades along with their marriage rates.
31. Hochschild (1997).
32. Zerubavel (2006) argues that rotating schedules and turn-taking provide ﬂ ex-
ible time structures and better correspond with the mental ﬂ exibility needed in
postindustrial contexts. As a counterpoint, however, Presser (2003) charts how the
rise of shift work and nonstandard working hours has created disruptions that leave
couples scrambling for time together.
33.  By blending work and family, these strategies hearken back to the preindus-
trial “family economy.” This may be a case of going “backward” to the future (Stacey,
1992).
34.  See Press (2004) and Coontz (2008), respectively. The rise of more egalitarian
marriages also signals a new form of “assortative mating,” in which achieving women
and men choose each other. Some argue this attraction of like to like increases class
inequality by compounding educational differences in economic opportunities. The
percentage of couples who share a similar level of educational attainment has reached
its highest point in forty years (Paul, 2006). Unfortunately, this view pits one form of
inequality against another. The more pressing challenge is to create a win-win scenario

260

n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 0 6 – 2 1 8

for working couples in all class groups. Because women in all income brackets need
an independent base, the answer is not to return to an inequality that gives men a leg
up, but to allow all people to thrive and then choose the partners they want.
35. Cooke (2006) and Amato et al. (2007).
36.  In his classic article “The Cohort as Concept in the Study of Social Change,”
Ryder (1965) shows how during periods of rapid social change, the shared experi-
ences of young adults may trump other social divisions.
37. Greenberg (2005) reports, for example, that 82 percent of young people
between eighteen and twenty-four know at least one gay person and a third know a
gay or lesbian whom they consider a “close friend.” In a New York Times/CBS News
poll, 57 percent of people under forty said they support same-sex marriage, com-
pared with 31 percent of those over forty (Nagourney, 2009).
38.  See, for example, Shorter (1975).
39. In addition to the argument made by Parsons and Bales (1955) that home-
maker-breadwinner couples are particularly “functional” in modern societies, Goode
(1963) proposed that the “conjugal family,” with the husband-wife bond at its core,
provides an especially good “ﬁ t” with industrial society’s need for geographic and
social mobility.
40.  Pew Research Center (2007b).
41. Witness the rise of new concerns among younger Evangelicals, who wish to
extend the traditional focus on private matters such as gender dynamics and sexual-
ity (where their outlooks remain quite conservative) to also include social issues such
as poverty. See, for example, Kirkpatrick (2008) and Greeley and Hout (2006).
42.  Pew Research Center (2007b).
43.  Greenberg, Quinlan, and Ross (2005).
44.  Also see Wolfe (1999) and DiMaggio, Evans, and Bryson (1996).
45.  See the discussion in Gerth and Mills (1953) of how people develop “vocabu-
laries of motive” to explain their actions to themselves and others, as well as that in
Scott and Lyman (1968) of the “accounts” people create to justify actions that are
“subjected to valuative inquiry.” Howard Becker (1964) also discusses how a series
of seemingly small “side bets” have unintended consequences that foster change in
adult commitments.

Chapter Nine

  1. Coontz (2005) argues that marriage has changed more in the last thirty years
than it did in the previous ﬁ ve millennia.
  2.  See, for example, Green (2006).
  3.  For evidence that younger generations of women and men are converging, not
diverging, on a variety of fronts, see Barnett and Rivers (2004), Mooney (2008), and
Cameron (2007).
  4.  A number of theorists argue that “culture” is embodied in actions, skills, and
“tool kits,” even more than in beliefs and ideologies. See, especially, Swidler (1986),
Lamont (2000), Lareau (2003), and Bourdieu (1977, 1984).
  5. See, for example, Hacker (2003). Hacker also notes how this “mismatch”
spans racial groups, as families of all races have diversiﬁ ed. In 1960, for example,

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261

91 percent of non-Hispanic white households were headed by a husband and wife,
compared to 67 percent of African-American families. But by 2000, the ﬁ gure for
white families had dropped to 80 percent, and births to unmarried white mothers
had risen to 22.5 percent by 2001, compared to 2.3 percent in 1960. The gender
revolution has both created new divides that undermine a system of “complementary
roles” enshrined in notions of husbands’ and wives’ separate spheres, and also created
grounds for lessening those divides. Jackson (1998) argues that the underlying forces
of industrialism and postindustrialism set the stage for achieving gender equality,
although not for achieving class and economic equality. For a wide-ranging look at
both sides of this debate, see Blau, Brinton, and Grusky (2006).
  6. Gerson (2002). For an excellent summary of the changing views and hid-
den beneﬁ ts of juggling “multiple roles,” see Barnett (2008). Despite the common
belief that men and women are better off when they specialize in work and family,
respectively, Barnett shows that the preponderance of research does not support this
view. To the contrary, when the quality is high, shouldering the multiple roles of
partner, parent, and employee is beneﬁ cial to the individual, the partner, and the
partnership.
  7. Drago (2007) examines how a care gap (in which children and other depen-
dents do not receive the care they need) is rooted in a “motherhood norm” expecting
women to provide care alone, an “ideal worker norm” expecting workers to put in
long hours, and an “individualism norm” relieving government of the responsibil-
ity to help. Albelda and Tilly (1997) point out that women executives and welfare
mothers have much in common—job discrimination, lower pay than men, and pri-
mary responsibility for unpaid care work. If we can see beyond class and gender
boundaries, it becomes clear that public policies need to provide economic equality
to women and support for all families. See, also, Rayman (2001) and Harrington
(1999). All of these writers see such policies as paid family leave, early childhood
education and child care ﬁ nancing, guaranteed health care, and ﬁ nancial security as
crucial to meeting contemporary family needs.
  8.  From Alexis de Tocqueville to Robert Bellah and his colleagues, cultural theo-
rists have spoken of the conﬂ ict between freedom and commitment, individualism
and community (Bellah et al., 1985; De Tocqueville, 2006). Cerulo (2008) extends
this argument by showing how American “values and beliefs are ‘a multiplex system’
[in which] the prioritization of one value over another . . . shifts [with] social events
and structural conditions.”
  9.  Bradbury and Katz (2004); Bond and Galinsky (2004).
10. Kelly (2009) points out that genuine work ﬂ exibility involves employee, not
employer, control and moves beyond accommodation to embrace widespread change
in workplace culture, especially when it comes to caretaking needs. Webber and
Williams (2008) add that the concept of ﬂ exibility can be used in different ways,
some of which enhance employer rather than employee preferences. In low wage ser-
vice jobs, for example, ﬂ exibility can be a euphemism for scheduling work according
to an employer’s needs.
11.  There are signs of headway for the concept of protecting caretakers from work-
place discrimination. Joan Williams (2007) reports that “caregiver discrimination”
cases increased 400 percent in the last ten years and that the U.S. Equal Employment

262

n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 2 1 – 2 2 4

Opportunity Commission recently issued guidelines on what might constitute ille-
gal discrimination against workers with family obligations.
12.  For analyses of the critical role of workplace culture and organizational leader-
ship, see, for example, Premeaux (2007) and Gerson and Jacobs (2001).
13.  For this reason, many argue that we need to develop “work-life” policies that are
need-blind and available to all (Casper et al., 2007). In 2002, the United Kingdom
established a right for workers caring for children under six (or under eighteen
if disabled) to request ﬂ exible work arrangements, and in 2006, it expanded this
right to those caring for adults. Although this law does not obligate an employer to
accept a request, surveys show that the vast majority of requests are granted and that
employers and employees both see beneﬁ ts (Boushey et al., 2008). Ford et al. (2007)
show that when organizations foster positive family relationships, improvements in
employee satisfaction and commitment make such investments worth their cost.
14.  Ray et al. (2008). In 2008, California was the only state with a paid family
leave policy, with Washington State joining in 2009. California’s policy offers six
weeks of leave and up to 55 percent of pay to care for a new baby or ill family member
(Hawkins, 2008).
15. Heymann (2006). For thorough analyses of current and needed workplace poli-
cies, see Bailyn (2006), Glass (2000, 2004), and Kalleberg (2007). For more popu-
lar treatments focusing primarily on high-achieving women, see Hewlett (2007)
and Mason and Ekman (2007). Jerry Jacobs and I (2004) propose a combination of
“work-facilitating” and “family-supportive” policies that speak to new gender and
family needs while also reafﬁ rming such core American values as equal opportunity,
personal responsibility, and community cohesion.
16.  Ray et al. (2008).
17. In addition to policies that actively encourage fathers’ involvement, such as
parental leaves that only fathers can take, it is also important to provide day care
and other child care supports that help mothers return to their jobs within a reason-
able time period. Misra et al. (2007) ﬁ nd that maternal leaves of over three months
decrease women’s longer-term work involvement and even leave them at greater risk
of falling into poverty.
18. Glass (2009). Countries with gender-divided policies that also have worri-
somely low fertility rates include Italy, Greece, Japan, and Germany. In contrast,
the Scandinavian countries, with more egalitarian policies and less concern for the
marital status of cohabiting parents, have notably higher fertility rates. The United
States birthrate has remained stable, but only because higher rates among immi-
grants have made up for lower rates among other women, including the children of
immigrants.
19. Furstenberg (2005).
20.  As a number of scholars have pointed out, the welfare state no longer supports
the stay-at-home mother in any case. See, for example, Alstott (2005), Bergmann
(1986), Fraser (1989), Mink (1998), and Orloff (2008). For overviews of child care
policies, see Heymann (2006) and Heymann and Beem (2005).
21. Jessica De Groot (2008), who heads the Third Path Institute and has spent
decades promoting what she calls “shared care,” explains that “there is no one-size-
ﬁ ts-all solution for families, and shared care does not demand that there be one. Even

n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 2 5 – 2 3 2

263

within one family, over time patterns that worked once will be modiﬁ ed, priorities
will change, and shared care will evolve and change just as life does.”
22.  Acknowledging the diversity of American lives, while also emphasizing shared
ideals, is a message that resonates with young people’s experiences. When Barack
Obama says “we may have different stories, but we share common hopes,” he is draw-
ing on this vision. Accordingly, a full 66 percent of voters between the ages of eighteen
and twenty-nine voted for Obama, with similar or higher majorities among youth in
all ethnic groups. And it would also be a mistake to presume that this more inclusive
vision is conﬁ ned to liberals and progressives. Among eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-
olds who identify as evangelical and born-again Christians, 32 percent cast their vote
for Obama, compared to 16 percent for John Kerry in 2004. Banerjee (2008) reports
that “younger evangelicals [are] representative of a new generation [who] say they are
tired of the culture wars [and] want to broaden the traditional evangelical agenda.”
Surveys by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life ﬁ nd  only  40 percent of
eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-old evangelicals identify themselves as Republicans,
down from 55 percent in 2005, while 32 percent say they are independents (up from 26
percent in 2005) and 19 percent say they are Democrats (up from 14 percent in 2005)
(Kuo and DiLulio, 2008). Teixeira (2009) also ﬁ nds that the more tolerant outlooks of
younger generations auger a substantial decline in the resonance of politically divisive
cultural wedge issues. Sarah Palin’s selection as the Republican vice presidential nomi-
nee is also telling and ironic, and not simply because she is a woman. Religious conser-
vatives embraced her candidacy even though she had young children and an unmarried
teenage daughter who became pregnant. Cultural fault lines remain strong, especially
around issues such as abortion and gay rights, but future candidates who claim to rep-
resent so-called values voters will ﬁ nd it more difﬁ cult to indict employed mothers.
23.  As C. Wright Mills pointed out ﬁ fty years ago in The Sociological Imagination
(1959), there are social roots to these “private troubles.”

Appendix 2

1. I use the term “generation” to refer to a group of people born within a histori-
cal period that binds them together in socially meaningful ways. Since the interviews
were conducted throughout the mid- to late 1990s and early 2000s, the sample
includes both younger members of “Generation X” and older members of “Gen-
eration Y,” who are also called “Millennials.” Yet analysts often disagree about the
proper birth date for designating membership in one group or the other, with some
starting as recently as 1983 to mark the dividing line and others going as far back
as 1979. For my purposes, younger Gen X’ers and older Millennials share a com-
mon set of experiences that transcend such distinctions and make these labels arbi-
trary and potentially misleading. I thus refer to my respondents as young adults or,
more colloquially, as twenty- and thirty-somethings. Carlson (2009) points out that
Generation X, which he argues includes those born up to 1982, is the ﬁ rst genera-
tion with a greater share of women than men graduating from college. Its members
have also delayed marriage and parenthood more than any other generation in the
twentieth century. Although only a minority of Millennials are old enough to have
left their parents’ home or to be considered young adults, those who have reached

264

n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 3 2 – 2 3 5

adulthood show patterns of schooling, marriage, parenting, and work that are similar
to younger Gen X’ers. While the interviews were conducted before the economic
crisis, the ﬁ ndings have even more relevance in its wake.
  2. To ensure the sampling of communities with a diverse range of social and
political outlooks, neighborhoods with Republican elected ofﬁ cials were included to
balance the preponderance of Democratic majorities in the Northeast. Respondents
grew up in all regions of the country.
  3.  The methodological procedures of the Study of the Immigrant Second Genera-
tion in Metropolitan New York are fully reported in Kasinitz, Mollenkopf, Waters,
and Holdaway (2008). There is no overlap between my interviews and those con-
ducted by the Second Generation project, which by agreement provided only names,
contact information, and brief screening information. Members of the ISGMNY
project had access to my interviews (without individual identiﬁ ers) to provide a con-
trast between those with immigrant parents and those growing up with native-born
parents.
  4.  Since my purpose was to understand the experiences of children who grew up
in the United States and were reared by parents who were also exposed to American
work and family changes, the children of immigrants were largely excluded from
my sample. None of the respondents were reared by a same-sex couple, but close to
5 percent hope to do so in their own lives.
  5.  Tables summarizing important frequency distributions are used to describe the
contours and relationships, or lack thereof, in the sample—not as a representation of
larger national samples.
  6.  See, for example, Patricia Hill Collins’ analysis of the intersection of race, class,
and gender in the lives of African-American women (1991) as well as Candace West’s
and Sarah Fenstermaker’s discussion of “doing difference” (1995).
  7.  Gerth and Mills (1940) long ago pointed to the importance of understanding
how people use “vocabularies of motive” to account for their own and others’ actions.
Scott and Lyman (1968) went on to propose we investigate how people develop
“accounts” to explain behavior that is necessarily “subjected to valuative inquiry.”
  8.  The methodological question is not whether accounts of the past are valid, but
whether any form of self-reporting is reliable. If not, then many of our most impor-
tant research tools, including surveys, would need to be jettisoned. Fortunately, this
is not the case.
  9.  As Glaser and Strauss (1967) point out in their classic discussion of the discov-
ery of grounded theory, qualitative research can use unexpected ﬁ ndings to produce
new ways of theorizing. When the ﬁ eld work produces no more analytic surprises, a
researcher has achieved “saturation” and can leave the ﬁ eld.
10.  The interviews were transcribed verbatim, and most of the selected quotes are
presented verbatim as well, including some that contain grammatical errors. Some
have been edited lightly, but only for clarity and brevity. All names were changed to
protect anonymity.
11. Theoretical concepts are “ideal types” that cannot correspond perfectly
with every piece of data, but they provide useful categories to explain empirical
outcomes.

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abandonment, 49–50, 58, 217
Abbott, A., 258n.15
Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, Luker,

246n.5

absentee parent, father, 20
Acker, J., 239n.13
Acock, A. C., 241n.6
“acting out roles,” parents, 31
adult partnerships, new forms, 3–4
adversity, good teacher, 95
afﬂ uence, “American dream,” 40–41
African-American men, 189–190
African-Americans, 244n.16, 249n.31
age, survey respondents, 8, 227–230
Ahrons, C., 242n.15, 243n.6
Albelda, R., 261n.7
alcohol, parental breakup, 86
Allhusen, V. D., 241n.10
Alstott, A., 262n.20
Amato, P. R., 30, 241n.3, 242n.14,

246n.1

American Business Collaboration, 247n.12
“American dream,” 40–41, 180–181
Amick, E., 250n.19
Ananat, E., 244n.14
Anderson, E., 249n.5
“aspiration gap,” ideal working times,

248n.17

“aspiration packages,” Weber’s, 246n.6
aspirations, young men and women, 104
“assortative mating,” 259–260n.34
Australia, supporting family, 222

autonomy

balancing commitment and, 212–213
care networks, 146–147
conﬂ ict between motherhood and, 141–142
earnings and women, 249–250n.11
gender and meaning of, 187
in search of work, 194–196
loss of, and relationships, 133–134
men seeking self-sufﬁ cient partner,

184–186

“modern women,” 117–118
through men’s eyes, 179–187

Backlash, Faludi, 252n.31
Bailyn, L., 262n.15
balance

earning and caring, for men, 159–160
job earnings and ﬂ exibility, 198–200
looking for middle path, 190–193
men redeﬁ ning work-family, 178–179
mother avoiding overload, 150–151
seeking personal, 110–112
state of mind, 173–174
striking equal work–family, 167–168
valuing, 220–224
willing to trade money, 258n.21
work and home, 40–42, 99
working-class women, 252n.30
young people sharing desire for, 225

balancing act, employed mothers, 5
Bales, R. F., 237n.1, 255n.23, 256n.3,

260n.39

I N D E X

i n d e x

285

children

aftermath shaping views, 32
care gap, 261n.7
embracing work ethic, 24
gaining involved caretaker, 56–57
gender revolution, 3, 103, 189
ignoring parents’ problems, 75
lessons and experiences, 15, 39–40
“lost fathers,” 87–88
parental breakups, 30–33
relief and sadness, 31
role models, 247n.10
single parents, 30, 56
stable childhood vs. happy home, 35
staying together for sake of kids, 29

child support, father refusing to provide, 48
Chodorow, N., 256n.3
“choice,” deﬁ ning equality as, 176–178, 188
“choice feminism,” 255n.24
“chosen families,” creation, 147
Clarke-Stewart, A., 241n.10
class

deﬁ ning, 239n.15
men’s fallback positions, 162, 163
studying social and individual change,

232–233

women’s fallback positions, 126–128
work and family ideals, 106, 107
young people sharing values, 225

Clinton, H., It Takes a Village, 243n.12
“clockwork of male careers,” Hochschild, 198
Cobb, J., 255n.25
cohabitation, 116, 140, 248n.19
Coleman, J., 249n.2
Coleman, M., 238n.7, 243n.9
Collins, P. H., 251n.22, 264n.6
Coltrane, S., 259n.27
commitment

afﬁ rming value of, 11
balancing, with autonomy, 212–213
children of divorce seeking, 108–109
gender roles, 138
men’s optimistic outlook, 170
parents sharing, 74
rearing children, 10–11
remarriages, 62–63
seeking lifelong, 107–110
“work ﬁ rst” ethos, 200

communitarians, concerns, 103
community decline, 103
“competing devotion,” 251n.25

“concerted cultivation,” 248–249n.29
conﬂ icts

easing, after breakups, 61
high- and low-conﬂ ict marriages, 29–30
intensive parenting, 121
men’s and women’s mobility, 251n.21
parental separation, 85
persistence of work-family, 123
work and family shifts, 7
work-life, of men, 160
young people shifting focus, 224–226

“conjugal family,” 144, 260n.39
Conley, D., 253n.13, 257n.14
Connell, R. W., 253n.4
consequences, long-run, framing views, 32
constant ﬁ ghting, 31–32, 69
contingency plans, self-reliant women, 126
contradictions

and conﬂ icts, 7
cultural and structural, 156, 239n.3,

246n.5, 252n.33

Coontz, S., 241n.4, 249n.11, 259n.34,

260n.1

Correll, S. J., 253n.7
Coser, Louis and Rose, “greedy institution,”

118

Cotter, D. A., 240n.21, 252n.32, 254n.17
Coy, P., 259n.28
Crittenden, A., 255n.26
Crittenden, D., 252n.32
Crouter, A. C., 241n.10
“culture,” embodiment, 260n.4
culture wars, moving beyond, 210–213

“daddy’s little girl,” fear of losing place as,

Damaske, S., 242n.12, 249n.8
Danziger, S., 140, 246n.2, 248n.24
daughters, lessons about mothers, 97–98
day care, dangers of organized, 257n.6
DeBarros, A., 248n.24
debate, “family values,” 16–17
De Groot, J., 262–263n.21
deinstitutionalization, marriage, 246n.2
Demo, D. H., 241n.6
Democrats, young Americans, 257n.7
“demographic metabolism,” life cycle,

239n.12

De Paulo, B. M., 250n.14
“dependency,” women, 256n.35
De Tocqueville, A., 261n.8

286

i n d e x

Deutsch, F., 247n.7, 259n.27
dilemmas

of combining earning and caretaking, 76,

82, 121, 190

of gender revolution, 3, 6
institutional, 192, 214, 216
men and, 159, 188
personal, 135, 158, 213
and structural and cultural contradictions,

246n.5, 252n.33

DiLulio, J. J., 263n.22
discipline, father and military, 37
diversity, within and between family types,

241n.6

divide

class and ethnic, 225
cultural and social, 212–213
gender, 105, 123, 189, 190, 201, 206,

218–219, 222, 261n.5, 262n.18

work-family, 12, 27, 35, 44, 203

divorce

aftermath, 242n.15
children of, 30, 108–109
child resisting, 58–59
constant ﬁ ghting vs., 69
controversial matters, 9
ﬁ nancial fallout for women, 244n.14
impermanence, 117
lessons for avoiding, 108
measurement, 248n.19
parents but not partners, 60–61
Pew Research Center, 210–211
rates, 104–105, 238n.6
relief or turn for worse, 85–86
remarriage, 91–92
“sleeper effect,” 242n.15
unhappily ever after, 84–85
women and power, 250n.12

The Divorce Revolution, Weitzman, 245n.5
domestic deadlocks, challenges, 72
domestic difﬁ culties

estranged and overburdened dual earners,

50–51

forms, 46
not-so-good providers, 47–49
not-so-happy homemakers, 49–50

domesticity

avoiding overload, 110, 150–151
better than being alone, 148–150
dangers of complete, 115–116
falling back on, 148–156

ﬁ nancial pressures, 19–20
ﬁ tting work in, 152–155
men shifting toward, 178–179
neotraditionalism, 155
perils of, 129–130
reluctant mothers, 78
“time-out” from workplace, 154–155
women, 19, 153–154

domestic load, 23–24, 28–29, 74
Drago, R., 254n.17, 257n.9, 261n.7
Dreby, J., 257n.6
drinking, fathers, 79–80, 86
drugs, 86–87, 97
dual-earner homes

balancing work and family, 40–42,

111–112

collaborative partnership, 2, 52–53
different trajectories from, 40–43
estranged and overburdened, 50–51
fair sharing, 113–114
ideals and work of family, 106
partner designations, 254–255n.21

dual-earner marriages

egalitarian give-and-take, 117
mismatch, 83–84
power struggle, 82–83
struggles, 82–85

Dwyer, K. P., 257n.13

earners, 63–64, 64–66
earnings

ﬂ exibility, 10, 216–217
women’s, 249–250n.11, 254n.20

Eberstadt, M., 257n.6
economic background, survey respondents,

230

economic control, fathers, 79
economic drain, grandparents, 93–94
economic security, 74, 97, 119–120, 135,

137

economic uncertainty, 179–182
economic vulnerability, mothers, 88
Edin, K., 244n.13, 244n.19, 249n.5,

250n.16, 251n.19, 256n.34

education, 55–56, 57–58, 88–89
educational spectrum, traditional

deﬁ nitions, 144

egalitarian ideals. See also men and equality

class and ethnic background, 106, 107
dual-earning parents, 117
family support, 223

i n d e x

287

gender and parents’ family, 105, 106
mothers and fathers, 259n.23
outlook, 105
traditionalism following, 123

egalitarian marriages, 259–260n.34
egalitarian partnership, 112–114, 201
egalitarian relationship, 10, 11, 62–63
Ehrenreich, B., 244n.17, 248n.28, 256n.37
Ekman, E. M., 262n.15
Elshtain, J. B., 241n.3
Elwert, F., 246n.2, 248n.19
employed mothers. See also self-reliance of

women

giving up jobs, 77–78
hiring, vs. childless women, 254n.16
paid care work, 244n.17
time-out from work, 154–155
work and home, 5, 17–25, 83, 150
work-committed, 21–24, 54–58
working for fulﬁ llment, not money, 34

England, P., 240n.21, 241n.5, 251n.19,

254n.16, 256n.34

Epstein, C. F., 239n.9, 253n.11, 256n.3
equality

concept, 106–107
deﬁ ning as “choice,” 176–178, 188
men resisting, 252n.1
self-reliant women deﬁ ning, 177–178
valuing, 220–224
views of men and women, 114
women’s ﬁ ght, 256n.37
young people sharing desire for, 225

equal parenting, ideal, 171
erosion, traditional families, 16
estrangement, 31, 79–80
ethnic background

men’s fallback positions, 162, 163
studying social and individual change,

232–233

survey respondents, 227–230
women’s fallback positions, 126, 127, 128
work and family ideals, 106, 107
young people sharing values, 225

ethnicity, “invisible inequality,” 166–167
Etzioni, A., 245n.1
evaluation, social and individual change,

235–236

Evangelicals, concerns of younger, 260n.41
exit strategy, deteriorating marriage, 71
experience, as teacher, 132–134
extended kin, caretaking, 64–66, 146–147

extended relatives, advantages, 75
“extramarital goings-on,” together despite, 27

fairness, sharing desire for, 225
faith, losing, in American dream, 180–181
fallback positions

distinguishing, 12
domesticity, 157–158
ideal balance giving way to, 162–164
men’s, 162, 163
women’s, 126–128
young women and men, 122, 123

Faludi, S., Backlash, 252n.31
families. See also ﬂ exible families

beyond family structure, 16–17
breadwinner-homemaker, 34–37
debate about, and gender change, 43
diverging pathways, 33–43
diversity, 260–261n.5
dual-earner homes, 40–43
explanations for change, 98–99
losing breadwinner, 87
lost opportunities, 94–95
mother’s ﬁ rst priority, 57
not ending well, 95–98
parental breakups, 37–40
putting, on back burner, 181–182
support, 75, 222–223
turning for worse, 76
turn to traditionalism, 78
unwelcome traditionalism, 79–82
within, and between, differences,

253–254n.13

young people sharing values, 225

Families and Work Institute, American

workers, 257n.8

Family and Work Institute, 247n.12
family background, 126–128, 162, 163
family decline, 103, 241n.3, 241n.4
family difﬁ culties, cautionary tales, 96–98
family fortunes, hidden lessons, 69–70
family life, 15, 72, 99
family pathways

direction, 99
families and lives as, 215–216
focus from family types to, 9–10
gender ﬂ exibility, 216–217
gender strategies, 214–219
labels, 215
perception, 43–44
supporting, 220

288

i n d e x

“family responsibility discrimination,” 221
family shifts, remarriages, 90–92
family stability, good start, 73
family structure, beyond, 16–17
family support, gender ﬂ exibility and,

67–68

family types, 9–10, 241n.6
“family-unfriendly” jobs, 218
family values

beyond culture wars, 210–213
ideals and strategies, 217–219
men stressing autonomy, 181
moral road map, 211
Pew Research Center, 210–211
polarized debate, 16–17
quality and ﬂ exibility, 209
remaking, 206–207
resisting judgment, 207–208
stressing function, 208–210

“family wage,” uncertainty in men’s

fortunes, 5

fathers

abandonment, 217
ambivalence, 164–165, 186–187
children with “lost fathers,” 87–88
concerns about layoffs, 35
custodial, 58–60
departure and economics, 37
drinking, 79–80, 86
economic control, 79
estrangement, 79–80
ﬂ ight, 86–88
“good provider” ethic, 5
inﬂ uence on sons, 253n.13
involved single, 58–60
“missing in action,” 48–49
mobility by mother’s career, 53
“mothering” skills, 243n.4
not-so-good providers, 47–49
parental leaves, 262n.17
parenting and work commitments,

255n.22

“real family man,” 2
refusing to share domestic load, 28–29
sharing domestic load, 23
struggles to support family, 96
unprepared mothers, 88–90
upwardly mobile career, 34–35
work and home, 17–25

fears, gender revolution, 85, 104–105
“feminine mistake,” 249n.3

The Feminine Mystique, Freidan, B., 238n.3
feminists, family life, 16
Fenstermaker, S., 264n.6
fertility, women’s plans and behavior,

250n.15

“ﬁ fty-ﬁ fty,” relationship, 26
ﬁ ghting, constant, 31–32, 69
ﬁ nances, independence of mother, 55
ﬁ nancial fallout, divorced women, 244n.14
ﬁ nancial insecurity, rocky marriage, 28
ﬁ nancial pressures, mother’s domesticity,

19–20

Flanagan, C., 244n.17
ﬂ exibility

Bureau of Labor Statistics, 257n.13
concept, 261n.10
creating options in social policy, 223–224
gender, 67–68, 216–217
restructuring work, 221–222
stressing, of members, 209
valuing, 220–224
work and care, 99
work autonomy, 195–196
work for young people, 203–206

ﬂ exible families

earners and caretakers, 64–66
gender ﬂ exibility and family support,

67–68

happy endings, 68
hidden lessons, 69–70
involved single fathers, 58–60
luck, 70–71
nonparental caretakers, 66–67
remarriages, 61–64
resilient single parents, 53–61
resolving marital stalemates, 51–53
road not taken, 68–69
stepparents, 63–64
still parents but not partners, 60–61
village, 64–67
work-committed single mothers, 54–58

ﬂ ight, parental breakups, 86–88
Folbre, N., 240n.19, 241n.5, 244n.17,

255n.23, 255n.26

Ford, M. T., 262n.13
fortunes, challenges of declining, 72
Fox-Genovese, E., 252n.32
Fragile Families Study, 251n.19
fragility, modern relationships, 123, 124
France, supporting family, 222
Fraser, N., 262n.20

i n d e x

291

Lorber, J., 237n.2, 239n.13
“love,” ﬂ eeting emotion, 137
Luker, K., Abortion and the Politics of

Motherhood, 246n.5

Lyman, S., 260n.45, 264n.7

McAdams, D. P., 245n.7
McHale, S. M., 241n.10
McLanahan, S., 242n.13, 245n.5
McPherson, M., 256n.37
Mandela, Nelson, 214
manhood, American novels, 253n.2
Manza, J., 253n.5
marital choices, children’s views, 16, 17
marital mismatches, children questioning,

marital stalemates, 51–53, 76–82
marital status, looking beyond, 32–33
Marquardt, E., 242n.15
marriage

advantage of egalitarian, 206
“better” and “worse,” 243n.11
“civilizing” inﬂ uence on men, 255n.32
deinstitutionalization of, 246n.2
ethics, 26
exit strategy, 71
generation’s redeﬁ nition of, 141
high- and low-conﬂ ict, 29–30
ideal, 109–110, 116–117
low priority for autonomous men,

183–184

main purpose, 117
median age of ﬁ rst, 248n.24
men, 168–170, 182–184
missteps avoiding troubled, 108
option, 7, 139–141
parents staying in rocky, 28
Pew Research Center, 210–211, 212
postponing, 137–138
quality of, by parents, 29
rates, 247n.11
remarriages, 61–64
resolving marital stalemates, 51–53
“restoring marriage” and U.S. policy, 223
same-sex, 247n.9
separation from motherhood, 143–144
together for sake of kids, 29
unfairly unequal, 26
unhappily ever after, 84–85
voluntary, 99

“marriageable men,” term, 253n.6

“marriage-like” relationship, gay or lesbian,

107

Marsiglio, W., 243n.8
Marx, making history, 219
Mason, M. A., 262n.15
maternal responsibility, intensive parenting,

172

“maternal wall,” J. Williams, 167
Mattingly, M. J., 254n.18
Maume, D. J., 257n.8
Meers, S., 247n.7
Meier, A., 245n.4, 247n.13
men. See also men and equality

autonomy through men’s eyes, 179–187
case for marriage, 254n.16
“civilizing” inﬂ uence of marriage,

255n.32

comparison to parents and grandparents,

189

dilemmas and uncertainties in men’s

lives, 188

fears of young, 105
independence as survival, 187
“instrument specialists,” 237n.1
marriage as option, 182–184
putting family on back burner, 181–182
work and family ideals, 106

Menaghan, E. G., 241n.6
men and equality

balance, 159–160, 173–174
breadwinning as fallback, 164–173
desire for change, 178–179
equality as “choice,” 176–178
fathers’ ambiguous models, 164–165
from parenting to mothering, 170–173
independence, 161–162
market work and gender of caretaking,

171–173

modiﬁ ed traditionalism, 159–160
moving toward marriage, 168–170
paternal ambivalence, 186–187
place of women’s work, 174–176
rising expectations, 160–161
seeking self-sufﬁ cient partner, 184–186
self-reliance and traditionalism, 162, 164
shifting to domesticity, 178–179
women’s jobs secondary, 175–176
workplace pull, 166–168

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus,

John Gray, 256n.3

Merton, R. K., 248n.18

292

i n d e x

Michaels, G., 244n.14
“midlife crisis,” 86
Milkie, M. A., 150, 241n.10, 251n.26,

259n.27

“Millennials,” 263n.1
Mills, C. W., 7, 239n.14, 256n.5, 260n.45,

263n.23, 264n.7

Mink, G., 262n.20
Misra, J., 262n.17
“missing in action,” father at ofﬁ ce, 48–49
Moby Dick, manhood, 253n.2
Moen, P., 239n.11, 248n.28, 257n.12
Mollenkopf, J. H., 264n.3
“mommy gap,” motherhood, 143
Mooney, N., 255n.28, 260n.3
Moore, K. A., 241n.4, 245n.6
Moore, M., 254n.19
moral

ambiguities, 244n.17
decline, 16, 225
framework, frame, 207, 210–213
institutions, 221
labor, 219
reasoning, 256n.3
responsibility, 178, 181
support, 170, 202
values, 218

morale, mothers’ withering, 79
Morris, M., 259n.28
“mother-child” family, postindustrialism,

144

motherhood

conﬂ ict between autonomy and, 141–142
cultural contradictions, 252n.33
“mommy gap,” 143
moving to traditional partnership, 149
postponing parenthood, 142–143
self-reliant women, 145–146
separating marriage and, 143–144

mothering, theory of reproductive, 256n.3
mothers. See also employed mothers

alcohol and ﬂ ight, 86
beyond work status, 25
breadwinners, 144–146
change and job decision, 52
decision to leave, 55
default caretaker, 171–172
devotion and kindness, 38
dissatisfaction, 49–50
domesticity, 19–21, 78, 110, 129–130
home-centered, 18–21

mistreatment by men, 64
mixed messages for daughters, 128–132
“opt-out,” 10
over-involvement, 79, 80
self-reliant models beyond, 131–132
separate spheres, 78–79
teen, 250n.16
unabated attention, 20

“multiple roles,” beneﬁ ts of juggling,

261n.6

Musbach, T., 248n.27
Musick, K., 245n.4, 247n.13
Myers, M. K., 257n.6, 257n.10

Nagourney, A., 257n.7, 260n.37
National Opinion Research Center, 250n.18
National Survey of Student Engagement,

253n.8

neoconservatives, concerns, 103
neotraditional ideals, 105–107, 126–128
neotraditionalism, self-reliance vs., 155
networks, 146–147, 244–245n.19, 251n.22
Newman, K. S., 248n.28
Niebuhr, Reinhold, social policy, 219
Nock, S., 248n.23, 255n.32
“nonconjugal” families, 251n.21
nonparental caretakers, temporary crises, 66
Northwestern University Center for Labor

Market Studies, 250n.19

Obama, B., 263n.22
O’Donnell, M., 255n.29
Oliver, M., 257n.13
“opportunity structures,” 248n.18
“opt-out revolution,” term, 240n.21
The Organization Man, Whyte, 238n.3,

257n.11

Orloff, A., 262n.20
out-of-wedlock pregnancy, rates, 104–105
“outsourcing,” modern family life, 255n.23
Ozzie and Harriet, 4, 116

Pager, D., 253n.5
Palin, Sarah, candidacy, 263n.22
Parcel, T. L., 241n.6
parental breakups

divergent paths after, 37–40
ﬂ ight, 86–88
relief or turn for worse, 85–86
remarriages, 90–92
silver linings, 95–96

i n d e x

293

still parents, 60–61
unprepared to “do it all,” 88–90
“worst case,” 85–90

parental estrangement, two-earner marriage,

parental ﬁ gures, caretakers, 66–67
parental separation, belief of action, 25
parenthood, postponing, 142–143, 186–187
parenting, 170–173
parents

“acting out roles,” 31
ambiguities of breakups, 30–32
“American dream” focus, 40–41
distribution of tasks, 34
pressures, 120–121
quality of bond forged, 29
reluctant traditionalism, 79–82
self-imposed roles, 35–36
“separate roles,” 36–37
sharing duties and economic security, 74
still, when not partners, 60–61
stuck “in a rut,” 35
together and apart, 25–33
vs. other caregivers, 171

Parker-Pope, T., 238n.6, 247n.9
Parsons, T., 237n.1, 255n.23, 256n.3,

260n.39

partnerships. See also relationships

building work-family, 206
dual-earner arrangement, 52–53
new forms of adult, 3–4
raising standards for acceptable, 138–139
seeking egalitarian, 112–114
skepticism, 121–122

“part-time,” deﬁ nition, 239n.9
paternal ambivalence, fathers, 186–187
pathways. See family pathways
Percheski, C., 238–239n.9, 240n.21
Peterson, R. R., 245n.5
Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life,

263n.22

Pew Research Center

children of employed mothers, 241n.8
divorce and marriage, 210
faithfulness and sexual relationship,

247n.13

nonmarital births, 238n.4
politics, 257n.7
sex and marriage, 212
women and part-time work, 246n.3

Pitt-Catsouphes, M., 258n.16

politics, young Americans, 257n.7,

263n.22

Popenoe, D., 241n.3, 248n.19, 255n.33
Population Reference Bureau, 239n.17
Porter, E., 252n.32, 255n.29
postindustrialism, 144, 200, 216
Potuchek, J. L., 254n.21
power struggle, dual-earner marriages,

82–83

pregnancy, out-of-wedlock, 104–105
Premeaux, S. F., 262n.12
Press, J., 259n.34
Presser, H. B., 259n.32
public assistance, 37, 55
Putnam, R. D., 245n.1

quality

bond forged by parents, 29
family bonds, 209
organized day care, 257n.6
remarriages, 62, 243n.10

race, survey respondents, 8, 227–230,

232–233

Raley, S. B., 254n.18
Rampell, C., 259n.25
Rankin, N., 258n.21
Ray, R., 243n.3, 262n.14
Rayman, P. M., 261n.7
relationships. See also partnerships

experience as teacher, 132–134
fragility of modern, 123, 124
loss of autonomy and, 133–134
postponing marriage, 137–138
raising standards for partner, 138–139
refashioning, 137–141
same-sex, 212
second chances, 99
uncertainty in, 116–118

reluctant traditionalism, parents, 79–82
remarriages

family shifts in, 90–92, 93
new and improved, 61–64
quality, 62, 243n.10
stepparents, 63–64

reproductive mothering, Chodorow theory,

256n.3

Republicans, young Americans, 257n.7
responsibility, individual to collective,

219–224

Ridgeway, C., 253n.7

i n d e x

295

The Sociological Imagination, Mills, 256n.5,

263n.23

sons, avoiding fate of fathers, 96–97
Springer, K. W., 241n.10, 248n.23
stability, 43–44, 149
Stacey, J., 237n.1, 241n.4, 243n.4, 259n.33
Stack, C., 244n.13, 249n.31, 251n.22
“stalled revolution,” term, 241n.5
standards, ideal marriage, 109–110
stay-at-home mother, 77, 131–132, 150

dissatisﬁ ed, 49–50, 51

stepparents, earners and nurturers, 63–64
Stevenson, B., 250n.12
Stinchcombe, A., 248n.18
Stone, P., 245n.2, 246n.3, 251n.25
Story, L., 240n.21
Strauss, A., 264n.9
Strober, J., 247n.7
“structural differentiation,” term, 255n.23
Study of the Immigrant Second Generation

in Metropolitan New York, 264n.3

success, 154, 170, 194
Sullivan, O., 259n.27
support

“bridging” for families, 224
disappearing villages, 92–94
expanding and eroding, 98
extended kin and friends, 64–66
family’s, system, 47
family types, 75
gender ﬂ exibility and family, 67–68
homes providing stability and, 43–44
work-committed mothers, 21–24

survey respondents, demographics, 227–230
survival, 11, 249n.31
Sweden, supporting family, 222
Swidler, A., 253n.2, 260n.4
sympathy, work-committed mothers, 21–24

Taubman, P., 258n.21
teachers, model of independence, 131
Teachman, J., 243n.10
Teixeira, R., 247n.14, 263n.22
Thee, M., 257n.7
The Time Bind, Hochschild, 204
Third Path Institute, “shared care,”

262–263n.21

Thorne, B., 237n.1
Tilly, C., 261n.7
tolerance, same-sex relationships, 212
Tolstoy, unhappy families, 47

traditional, term, 237–238n.3
traditional family

breadwinner father and mother at home,

1, 2

erosion of, 16
perceptions by education, 144
support, 45
work and family ideals, 106

traditional homes

good start, 73–74
minority view, 114–116
opting for, 91–92
overcoming gender boundaries, 113

traditionalism

costs of unwelcome, 79–82
family’s turn toward, 78
following egalitarian relationship, 123
men looking to modiﬁ ed, 159–160
options for men, 162, 164

traditional marriage, 18–19, 26–27, 33,

84–85, 118

trajectory

adult, 223
career, 194
childhood, 232
family, 10, 37, 243

transformations

economic, 255, n.28
family, 68
in marriage, 51

transitions

to adulthood, 7
family, 33, 216, 224

A Treatise on the Family, Becker, 258n.18
“trial marriages,” cohabitation, 140
Trimberger, E. K., 250n.14, 251n.22
two-earner marriage, 28, 32, 33
two-income partnerships, family form, 6
two-parent homes, advantages, 29
Tyagi, A. W., 239n.10, 254n.20, 258n.19

Uchitelle, L., 239n.10, 240n.21, 252n.32,

255n.29

Uggen, C., 253n.5
uncertainties

economic, and lure of singlehood,

179–182

men’s lives, 188
relationships, 116–118
social networks, 244n.13
workers in American workplace, 119

296

i n d e x

unhappy families, 47, 210–211
United Kingdom, right for workers,

262n.13

United States, 222, 223
U.S. Census Bureau

bachelor’s degrees, 259n.29
births to unmarried mothers, 251n.19
child care arrangement, 244n.18
children’s living arrangements, 238n.8
divorce and cohabitation, 248n.19
marriage, 247n.11
never-married twentysomethings,

248n.24

nonmarital births, 238n.4
parenthood, 250n.18
racial/ethnic divergence, 239n.17

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity

Commission, 261–262n.11

Vachon, M. and A., 246–247n.7
Valian, V., 253n.7
values

equality, ﬂ exibility, and balance, 220–224
ideals and strategies, 217–219
young people sharing, 225–226

Vanneman, R., 252n.32, 254n.17
Vermont, same-sex civil unions, 247n.9
village, 64–67, 92–94

It Takes a Village, 243n.12

volleyers, ﬂ exstyle, 258n.17
voluntary marriages, option, 99

wage gap, gender, 259n.25
Waite, L., 64, 243n.11, 254n.16
Waldfogel, J., 241n.10
Wallerstein, J. S., 242n.15
Warner, J., 249n.29
Warren, E., 239n.10, 254n.20, 258n.19
Washington State, paid family leave,

262n.14

Waters, M. C., 264n.3
“weaving,” work and motherhood, 259n.23
Webber, G. R., 261n.10
Weber, M., 246n.6
Weisberg, A., 258n.17
Weitzman, L., 244n.14, 245n.5
West, C., 264n.6
Western, B., 253n.5
Whitehead, B. D., 241n.3
Whyte, W. H., The Organization Man,

238n.3, 257n.11

Wilcox, B., 248n.23
Williams, C., 253n.7, 261n.10
Williams, J., 240n.21, 245n.2, 246n.3,

251n.25

caregiver discrimination, 261–262n.11
“ideal worker,” 257n.12
“maternal wall” for women, 167

Wilson, J. Q., 255n.32
Wilson, W. J., 253n.6
Winslow-Bowe, S., 254n.17
Wladis, N., 241n.10
Wolfers, J., 250n.12
women. See also self-reliance of women

blurring boundaries in uncertain futures,

156–158

college enrollment, 253n.8
default caretaker, 151–152
“dependency,” 256n.35
earnings, 249–250n.11, 254n.20
“expressive specialists,” 237n.1
“feminine mistake,” 249n.3
fertility plans and behavior, 250n.15
ﬁ ght for equality, 256n.37
focus on work, 112
happiness, 248n.23
hiring mothers vs. childless, 254n.16
lessons about mothers, 97–98
parenting pressures, 120–121
personal autonomy of modern, 117–118
“reserve labor army,” 175
rise of self-reliance, 11–12
self-development, 140–141
time-out from work, 154–155
work, 4–5, 11, 106, 238–239n.9

women’s work, breadwinning in age of,

173–179

Wooden, M., 254n.17
work

“career” idea, 196–198
ﬁ ghting for control at, 194–200
money and job autonomy, 198–200
mothers and fathers, 17–25
“needing” and “wanting” to, 136
models of ideal worker, 200, 221
restructuring, 221–222
term, 240n.19
time pressures, 248n.26

work-committed mother, 21–24, 54–58
work-family conﬂ ict, dual earners, 50–51
work-family partnership, 206
work-family shared career, 210–206

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